Stop web child enticement
A searing article by a nationally syndicated columnist has given new impetus to April 2021, which is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.
The piece by Nicholas Kristof spells out in sickening detail how the pornography industry is abetted by major corporations such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. How porn companies, some of them huge international corporations, profit from videos showing rapes and child pornography. And how the lives of countless young people have been ruined after nude photos of them were posted without their knowledge or consent. In some cases, resulting in suicide.
It’s not just the porn companies, either. Kristof reports that mainstream platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit “are all sprinkled with child sexual abuse imagery.”
How can that be? One answer is that there is a provision in federal law that holds Big Tech legally harmless for anything and everything that appears on their sites. The provision, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, allows these companies to publish material, even when it is extremely offensive, without fear of lawsuits.
Section 230 was written to enable the free exchange of ideas on the internet, but the seriousness of the abuses makes it clear modifications are overdue, a job that falls squarely on Congress’ shoulders.
The most important change Democrats and Republicans must focus on is going after the people who use online platforms to sexually exploit children. We know this is a priority, thanks to a new and chilling report by NCMEC (the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) that says in 2020 “more than 21.7 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation (were) made to NCMEC’s CyberTipline. This marks the highest number of reports ever received in one year.”
The NCMEC also found a disturbing increase in its “CyberTipline reports of online enticement. In 2020 alone, we’ve seen the rate of these types of incidents increase 97.5 percent compared to the year prior.”
What does “online enticement” mean? Here’s the definition: “(It) involves an individual communicating with someone believed to be a child via the internet with the intent to commit a sexual offense or abduction . ... This type of victimization takes place across every platform; social media, messaging apps, gaming platforms, etc.”
NCMEC did note that 2020 was unusual because “the COVID-19 pandemic have moved both children’s and adults’ lives online even more than they already were . ... This leaves kids and teens more susceptible to the dangers of the internet.”
But it is a big mistake to think online sexual exploitation will go away when life returns to normal. The danger will persist until Section 230 is rewritten so that it is in Big Tech’s best interest to block messages and advertisements designed to lure children into sexual situations.
How can Congress do that? The most promising legislative proposal is called the EARN IT (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies) Act. It enjoys bipartisan support, which is crucial in Washington these days. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) introduced it last year and it has been advanced again this year in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The EARN IT Act would allow state and federal lawsuits against companies that advertise, distribute or promote child sexual-abuse material online. The federal suits would be civil; the state suits could be criminal as well as civil.
The bill would also establish a National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention that would create voluntary best practices for Big Tech to follow as it develops program and writes algorithms to filter out enticements designed to exploit kids.
Reforming Section 230 is a complicated matter because so many competing interests are involved — everything from free speech rights to corporate profits.
But as the NCMEC’s shocking findings make clear — 21.7 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation in a single year — the time for Congress to take action to protect our kids is long overdue.