Over 300 cases of child exploitation went unnoticed by Facebook – study
1 min readReports show that as users on Facebook have increased, so has the number of child exploitation cases. Photograph: Keith Morris/Alamy. Article by Kari Paul.
Facebook failed to catch hundreds of cases of child exploitation on its platform over the past six years, a study published on Wednesday found.
The site was used as a medium to sexually exploit children in at least 366 cases between January 2013 and December 2019, a report from the not-for-profit investigative group Tech Transparency Project (TPP) analyzing Department of Justice news releases found. Only 9% of the 366 cases were investigated because Facebook alerted authorities, while the rest of the investigations were initiated by authorities without prompting from the social media giant. This suggests Facebook is not doing all it can to enforce its community standards, which bans “content that sexually exploits or endangers children,” said TPP executive director Daniel Stevens. […]