An independent cybersecurity data analyst who is currently working with top officials at Twitter has revealed that accounts posting content that allegedly sexually exploited children was getting more than ten million views on the social media platform under its previous ownership. This is so horrifying. Children being abused and exploited were slapped all over Twitter and those who were in charge didn’t seem to be doing a whole lot about it. The fact this is now changing under Elon Musk is reason enough to celebrate his taking over the company.
According to The Daily Wire, Andrea Stroppa, who founded cybersecurity company Ghost Data, personally poured funds into research related to this issue last summer, which resulted in the destruction of over 500 accounts that were soliciting Child Sexual Abuse Material, which then led to approximately 30 major advertisers either pulling their ads or placing them on hold.
“A new report from the data analyst released Friday found that more than 95% of several active accounts exploiting CSAM, which allegedly included videos of children and teens involved in sexual activities, ‘acted with impunity for years,'” the report continued.
🧵I. How the old Twitter failed the fight against children's sexual exploitation content (sigh) and more
— Andrea Stroppa 🐺 Claudius Nero's Legion 🐺 (@andst7) December 9, 2022
“The more we work on child sexual abuse material on Twitter, the more we find the HELL left by the old Twitter management,” Stroppa stated in a Twitter thread.
Stroppa then remarked that those accounts responsible for posting this material have been deleted. The CSAM issues on Twitter have been reported on for more than 10 years now. Which is more than enough time to shut this kind of behavior down with a vengeance.
“Last summer, Twitter claimed that the company aggressively fights online child sexual abuse; however, a Twitter Red Team report from an Adult Content Monetization project found that although the platform invested in technologies to detect and manage the issue, ‘growth has not,'” the report continued.
“Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale,” the Red Team stated in conclusion back in April 2022, according to The Verge.
“Last year, 86,666 CSAM reports on Twitter were made to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which plays a key role after Internet sites — like Twitter — remove the material. When CSAM is detected and removed, the report goes to the center, which contacts law enforcement for further action,” the Daily Wire said.
The social media company is also currently facing two rather significant lawsuits involving two minor survivors who were allegedly exploited on Twitter. In one case in particular, a video earned more than 160,000 views and over 2,000 retweets. However, Twitter refused to remove the content despite the minor survivor requesting them to do so while on the verge of committing suicide.
“I found that old Twitter, in many cases related to child sexual abuse material published on the platform by malicious users, instead of suspending the whole account, just removed the tweet,” Stroppa remarked. “Now Twitter, under Elon Musk’s leadership, directly suspends the accounts.”
To add a little extra context to the situation, a previous report revealed that the platform actually removed 57,000 profiles in the month before Musk took over the company. Twitter reported just last week that the company has suspended 57 percent of the accounts who are responsible for the creation of this disgusting content, which the company say sis “significantly more than any other month ytd. “
We’ve been improving our detection and enforcement methods and expanding our partnerships with organizations that help prevent the trafficking of CSE material. This has resulted in 57% more CSE suspensions in November, which is significantly more than any other month YTD. pic.twitter.com/KWzciQvxPR
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) December 10, 2022
Late last week, both Musk and former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey got into an exchange on this very topic over the reported lack of action. Dorsey then fired back that these allegations were false.
No, it is not.
When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety.
She raised this with Ned & Parag, but they rejected her staffing request.
I made it top priority immediately.@ellagirwin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Ella Irwin, Musk’s choice for Twitter’s Trust & Safety department, responded to Dorsey by saying, “I wish this was false but my experience this year supports [what Musk said].”
I wish this was false but my experience this year supports this. I fought hard to get funding to replace the people working on this who left in early 2022 and was told no. At one point there were 0 engineers and very few employees working on CSE and still no funding.
— Ella Irwin (@ellagirwin) December 9, 2022
Dorsey replied by saying he wasn’t aware of what happened over the course of the last year.
“But to say we didn’t take action for years isn’t true,” he shot back.
I don’t know what happened in past year. But to say we didn’t take action for years isn’t true. You can make all my emails public to verify. Company took away my access to email or I would.
— jack (@jack) December 9, 2022
Let’s more of these accounts are destroyed and that child pornographers are held accountable for their actions.