On Wednesday, a boy who had allegedly been solicited and recruited for sex trafficking as a minor then, after escaping, reportedly had to endure child sexual abuse material depicting him promoted on Twitter, sued Twitter.
The lawsuit asserts, “This lawsuit seeks to shine a light on how Twitter has enabled and profited from CSAM (child sexual abuse material) on its platform, choosing profits over people, money over the safety of children, and wealth at the expense of human freedom and human dignity.”
“Twitter is not a passive, inactive, intermediary in the distribution of this harmful material; rather, Twitter has adopted an active role in the dissemination and knowing promotion and distribution of this harmful material. Twitter’s own policies, practices, business model, and technology architecture encourage and profit from the distribution of sexual exploitation material,” the lawsuit continues.
The lawsuit is suing Twitter for damages “under the federal Trafficking Victims’ Protection Reauthorization Act, Failure to Report Child Sexual Abuse Material, Receipt and Distribution of Child Pornography, and related state law.” The claimant alleges that Twitter “knowingly hosted sexual exploitation material, including child sex abuse material (referred to in some instances as child pornography), and allowed human trafficking and the dissemination of child sexual abuse material to continue on its platform, therefore profiting from the harmful and exploitive material and the traffic it draws.”
“Defendant has benefited financially and/or received something of value from participation in one or more sex trafficking ventures by allowing Twitter to become a safe haven and a refuge for, ‘minor attracted people,’ human traffickers, and discussion of ‘child sexual exploitation as a phenomenon,’ to include trade and dissemination of sexual abuse material,” the lawsuit states.
Noting Twitter’s capacity for censorship, the lawsuit continues: “Twitter has a variety of mechanisms used to moderate content on the platform. Upon information and belief, Twitter uses software and algorithms to ensure tweets reach a smaller audience, block users from tweeting, hide tweets from users in a specific country, hide user profiles, convert users into read-only mode, temporarily lock users out of their account until account verification, and permanently suspend accounts. Rather than act decisively by banning certain types of behavior and allowing others, Twitter’s policy and engineering teams sometimes de-emphasize content and allow users to hide content that may be offensive but not explicitly against the platform’s terms of service.”
“Notwithstanding its stated policy, Twitter permits large amounts of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation material on its platform, despite having both the ability to monitor it, and actual and/or constructive knowledge of its posting on the platform,” the lawsuit claims. “Twitter also contains significant pornographic content, including illegal child sexual abuse content. Twitter permits numerous profiles, posts, comments, and other content either advertising, soliciting, or depicting CSAM.”
This is an excerpt from The Daily Wire.
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