Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday urging him to review Twitter’s handling of child exploitation, saying the Justice Department’s failure to address the issue was “unacceptable.” ‘ said.
“Unfortunately, Twitter offers little confidence that the platform is adequately policing to prevent child sexual exploitation online,” wrote Durbin of D-Ill. “This puts children in serious danger.”
The letter, citing a report from NBC News, described dozens of Twitter accounts and hundreds of tweets using numerous hashtags to promote the sale of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). I found Some tweets were brazen about how they marketed their material using common CSAM terms and abbreviations. After the article was published, Twitter said it was blocking access to some hashtags associated with the post.
Durbin urged Garland to review public reports of child exploitation on Twitter and consider whether an investigation is warranted.
“We urge you to consider whether an online platform can be held liable under federal criminal law for failing to take reasonable steps to prevent the predictable spread of CSAM on its platform. If not, the Senate Judiciary Committee requires additional legislative bodies for the State Department to address criminal negligence such as this,” Durbin wrote.
In December, Durbin wrote to Twitter CEO Elon Musk expressing concern about the safety of children on the platform following his layoffs and the dissolution of the Trust and Safety Council. .
Neither Musk nor Twitter have publicly responded to the letter.
Musk said his priority was to keep child exploitation material out of the platform, and criticized Twitter’s previous leadership for not doing enough to address the issue.
In addition to Durbin, however, some child advocates have expressed concern that Musk’s actions at the company may make it more difficult to deal with CSAM on the platform.
NBC News reported that as of early January, about 20 people worked for Twitter’s Trust & Safety organization. This is less than half of the group’s former employees.
“If you fire most of the human trust and safety staff who understand this, and rely entirely on algorithms and automated detection and reporting measures, you are just scratching the surface of the CSAM phenomenon on Twitter. Victoria Baines, a child exploitation crime expert who has worked with the UK National Crime Agency, Europol, the European Cybercrime Center and Facebook, previously told NBC News.
Twitter has refuted reports that it’s not doing enough to promote child safety.
Ella Irwin, vice president of product overseeing trust and safety at Twitter, told NBC News earlier this month that the company “has about 25% more people on this issue/problem area now than it did at its peak last January. We are staffing,” he said. We’re improving rapidly, with far more detections than Twitter has had in a long time, but we’re doing a lot to keep improving. “
