Elon Musk, the new CEO and owner of Twitter, made headlines over the weekend when he announced his new “priority #1” is to address what the Western Journal described as Twitter’s “sickening secret.”
Reportedly, in his review of company policies and processes, he became aware of how the Twitter platform has been used to support the exploitation of children and not used enough to safeguard the practice.
Musk tweeted that using his platform to mitigate the sexual abuse of children has become his new “Priority #1.”
Musk’s tweet came in response to a plea from Eva Fox, a blogger who wrote an article for Tesmanian, an online publication covering news regarding the various companies Musk owns. The article was critical of Twitter’s efforts in years past to address content concerns regarding sex trafficking and the sexual abuse of children.
In writing the article, Fox interviewed Eliza Bleu, a human trafficking survivor who now advocates for victims. According to the Journal, Bleu told Fox that Twitter “has not actually done anything meaningful to combat” child sexual exploitation despite pleas from advocates — until now.
Bleu noted that out of over 29 million reports from “electronic service providers” to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children CyberTipline in 2021, fewer than 90,000 had come from Twitter. Bleu argued, “that number could, and should, be higher.”
Two months ago, Fox profiled a study showing “that pornography, including child pornography, continues to be posted on Twitter, while the users behind these accounts, using simple methods, bypass restrictions on their activities by continuing to publish content, in which children are sexually exploited.”
Musk has taken significant steps to address the issue in the short time he has been at the helm of Twitter. Fox took notice and tweeted:
“Thanks to the efforts of Eliza and those who supported her, in February 2022, Twitter added a feature to easily report child sexual exploitation material, which was a huge victory in a years-long struggle.”
Fox noted that Musk was addressing Bleu’s concerns:
The Journal’s article concluded by rebuking Twitter’s previous leadership for prioritizing “policing political speech” over “protecting innocent children,” questioning, “In whose mind, in what universe could that possibly make sense?”
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