According to Facebook, "Nudity, hate speech, self-harm, dangerous organisations, bullying and harassment, sexual violence and exploitation, criminal activity, violence and graphic content," all violate their community standards, yet after an extensive investigation, BBC found over 100 images that violates those guidelines, which included: pages explicitly for men with a sexual interest in children; images of under-16s in highly sexualized poses, with obscene comments posted beside them; groups with names such as "hot xxxx schoolgirls" containing stolen images of real children, and; an image that appeared to be a still from a video of child abuse, with a request below it to share "child pornography."
In order to report those violations, Facebook encourages you to use their "report button," which BBC did to test how well their system works. Facebook removed only 18 of the 100 images, sending them an automated message informing them the other 82 did not breach "community standards."
Clearly Faceook's judgement on what poses a risk to children is very different than BBC's, so BBC showed the results of their investigation to the Children's Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, who agreed with BBC, saying "I have been very disturbed by what I have seen, very disappointed that one year on we are still seeing images that are very sexualized, totally in my view unacceptable." She further questioned their "moderation," stating "clearly isn't being effective," while questioning if they even have human beings doing the reviews.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) also spoke out against Facebooks failure to remove the images with a spokeswoman stating "Facebook's failure to remove illegal content from its website is appalling and violates the agreements they have in place to protect children. It also raises the question of what content they consider to be inappropriate and dangerous to children."
To top it off, BBC also found five convicted pedophiles among Facebook users, which also violates their terms of service, reported them and none of them were removed.
Faced with the criticisms over their refusal to remove sexually explicit, child related content and their moderation failures, Facebook finally agreed to a sit down interview with BBC about their moderation tools. The Facebook representative was Simon Milner, but according to Gizmodo, he had one condition, first BBC had to send him the offending images that had been found on the site.
BBC complied.
Facebook then canceled the meeting and reported the BBC journalist to the authorities for distributing "images of child exploitation."
The BBC journalists sent Facebook the images they had flagged from private Facebook groups. And not only did Facebook cancel the interview, the company reported the journalists to the police.
"It is against the law for anyone to distribute images of child exploitation. When the BBC sent us such images we followed our industry’s standard practice and reported them to CEOP [Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre]," Facebook told Gizmodo in a statement. "We also reported the child exploitation images that had been shared on our own platform. This matter is now in the hands of the authorities."
Let that sink in for a moment. Not only do they refuse to remove images that sexually exploit children, but when confronted with the moderation failures, they basically set up the reporter that was attempting to get those moderation tools updated to prevent further child sexual exploitation, by insisting they send the images they found, then reporting the BBC reporter for sending the images Facebook itself insisted they send!
In late February President Trump held a meeting with anti-human trafficking experts and made it very clear it was an issue he was prepared to bring the full force of government resources to address.
You can hear his statement on that below.
There is no question human trafficking, where the majority of victims are minors, is a major problem, not just in America but internationally. It is also a fact that Facebook has been supposedly addressing their moderation issues for well over a year, which makes it even more unacceptable that when confronted with evidence that their platform is being used by those that are sexually exploiting children, then removed less than 20 percent of those images from their platform.
Then proceeded to report the journalist that blew the whistle on them, to the authorities for providing them proof they, themselves, asked for.
Why is Facebook protecting convicted pedophiles and allowing them on their platform even after being informed? Why is Facebook not removing sexually explicit images of children? Why do they not have human being, rather than an automated system, handling any and all "reports" that deal with child exploitation?
They seem to have plenty of time to censor conservative news, censor those exposing child exploitation, censor real news on radical Islamic terrorism, censoring real news, on behalf of Germany's Angela Merkel, about the migrant rape running rampant across Europe, censoring Christian posts, and on and on and on, but they cannot find the resources to remove child porn or convicted pedophiles? They cannot find the resources to make a human being available to speak with when child pornography is found on their site?
By not removing images of children being sexually exploited, they are in fact, facilitating that exploitation.
REPORT FACEBOOK CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
Since Facebook's "report" function fails to remove child pornography, I would suggest that rather than using a function that clearly doesn't work or produce results, anyone that sees a child pornography post or image on Facebook, report FACEBOOK themselves to the authorities for hosting child pornography.
The Justice.gov website recommends filing reports involving the possession, distribution, receipt, or production of child pornography, with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)'s website at www.cybertipline.com , or to call 1-800-843-5678. Your report will be forwarded to a law enforcement agency for investigation and action.
Since Mark Zuckerberg is the chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Facebook, make sure his name is attached to any report of any child being sexually exploited on his platform, because ultimately it is his responsibility to determine what issues are priority and to implement methods to prevent his creation from facilitating child pornography and child exploitation.
Perhaps he should be more concerned about that than helping Angela Merkel hide news of migrant crime and rape or pushing liberal agendas and suppressing conservative news.
