As the ongoing release of the Twitter Files shows, there was a good reason the Left Establishment were so determined to try and stop Elon Musk’s takeover: there’s too much dirty laundry they wanted to keep hidden. Not just its collusion with the Deep State to suppress information that would have embarrassed the Biden campaign and likely changed the 2020 election, but some very, very dirty secrets.
Like protecting child abusers and enabling child abuse content.
Child-safety advocates are blasting Twitter and lining up to support a lawsuit that alleges the social network declined to remove videos depicting the sexual exploitation of minors despite pleas from a victim and his family.
SF Examiner
SF Examiner
The material in question was sexually explicit material featuring then 13-year-olds. As too often happens, the victims were blackmailed into cooperating with the filmed abuse. The abuse was widely viewed on Twitter, including by others at the victims’ schools.
This is surely a clear violation of several unequivocal Twitter policies.
You may not post or share intimate photos or videos of someone that were produced or distributed without their consent […]
Under this policy, you can’t post or share explicit images or videos that were taken, appear to have been taken or that were shared without the consent of the people involved.
We have a zero-tolerance child sexual exploitation policy on Twitter.
Any content that depicts or promotes child sexual exploitation including, but not limited to:
visual depictions of a child engaging in sexually explicit or sexually suggestive acts;
illustrated, computer-generated or other forms of realistic depictions of a human child in a sexually explicit context, or engaging in sexually explicit acts […]
trying to obtain sexually explicit media from a child or trying to engage a child in sexual activity through blackmail or other incentives;
So, blackmailing kids to participate in child sexual abuse material is an open-and-shut violation of Twitter’s “zero-tolerance” policies, right?
“We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” Twitter told the plaintiff in 2020, the lawsuit alleges.
Twitter can’t even plead the poor excuse of ignorance.
The lawsuit says the plaintiffs asked for the material to be removed, and at Twitter’s request proved the videos were of them and that they were underage when the videos were taken. One of the plaintiff’s mothers asked Twitter to remove the videos, as well. But Twitter’s safety team deemed the videos acceptable under their terms of service and declined to remove them, the lawsuit alleges […]
“What do you mean you don’t see a problem? We both are minors right now and were minors at the time these videos were taken. We both were 13 years of age. We were baited, harassed, and threatened to take these videos that are now being posted without our permission. We did not authorize these videos AT ALL and they need to be taken down,” the plaintiff argued, according to the lawsuit.
Still Twitter refused to take down what it knew was child porn — until law enforcement got involved.
When an acquaintance of the family who worked for the Department of Homeland Security contacted Twitter, the company removed the videos, the lawsuit alleges.
In the meantime, the material remained freely available on Twitter for up to nine days, attracting at least 167,000 views.
Twitter’s justifications just keep wearing thinner.
As part of the case, Twitter entered an exhibit showing it banned accounts involved in the posting of the videos of the plaintiffs. But The Examiner found the banned accounts are still mentioned in dozens of tweets referencing sex and boys, some with obscene photos. Twitter did not immediately respond to a question about the tweets mentioning a key figure in the lawsuit.
SF Examiner
SF Examiner
“Experts” tried to claim that Twitter’s child abuse problem would get “worse” under Elon Musk.
In the wake of Musk’s chaotic takeover of the company, they worry the problem will intensify.
“If it was bad when there were a bunch of people [working on child protection], imagine nobody there taking care of it,” said former police officer Yami Pence, who served as a detective in Florida’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit until last year.
Forbes
Forbes
In fact, as we now know, tens of thousands of child exploitation accounts have been removed from Twitter. More are being purged every day.
So, having “nobody taking care of it” is actually better than having Twitter’s former employees “taking care of it”.
Fancy that. I can’t imagine why.
