Twitter faces Lawsuit for refusal to remove child porn of sex trafficking victim claiming said content didn't violate it's politices

[Dwarvenhobble]

Twitter refused to remove child porn because it didn’t ‘violate policies’: lawsuit

Twitter refused to take down widely shared pornographic images and videos of a teenage sex trafficking victim because an investigation “didn’t find a violation” of the company’s “policies,” a scath…

nypost.com

Twitter refused to take down widely shared pornographic images and videos of a teenage sex trafficking victim because an investigation “didn’t find a violation” of the company’s “policies,” a scathing lawsuit alleges.

The teen — who is now 17 and lives in Florida — is identified only as John Doe and was between 13 and 14 years old when sex traffickers, posing as a 16-year-old female classmate, started chatting with him on Snapchat, the suit alleges.

Over the next month, the videos would be reported to Twitter at least three times — first on Dec. 25, 2019 — but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved, the suit states.

While Doe’s parents contacted the school and made police reports, he filed a complaint with Twitter, saying there were two tweets depicting child pornography of himself and they needed to be removed because they were illegal, harmful and were in violation of the site’s policies.

A support agent followed up and asked for a copy of Doe’s ID so they could prove it was him and after the teen complied, there was no response for a week, the family claims.

Around the same time, Doe’s mother filed two complaints to Twitter reporting the same material and for a week, she also received no response, the suit states.

Finally on Jan. 28, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn’t be taking down the material, which had already racked up over 167,000 views and 2,223 retweets, the suit states.

“Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” the response reads, according to the lawsuit.

So yeh, nothing illegal at all goes on, on other apps hosed on Amazon Web Servers at all right (Twitter is hosted by AWS for those who don't know)?

I'd wager this isn't the only such incident either

 

[Seanchaidh]

2,223 retweets

... why?

 

[Schadrach]

... why?

Presumably for the same reasons one might retweet other porn. I don't know what those are because it's not something I've done before and seems kinda...weird to start with.

Twitter will get a slap on the wrist for this and definitely no other tech giants will do anything about Twitter as a consequence. For example Apple/Google won't pull their apps from phones, Amazon won't cut them off (significant parts of Twitter are run on AWS), their DNS provider won't kill their domain name, etc, etc.

Because refusing to remove child porn just isn't bad enough, not a real monstrous action like refusing to control legal speech.

I'd wager this isn't the only such incident either

Twitter closed something like a quarter million accounts over about 6 months last year for being in essence a large child porn network that they hadn't bothered to do anything about prior. Most of them weren't new accounts, either. I wouldn't be surprised if the main difference here (as far as Twitter's behavior) is that the victim is a not-quite-legal boy instead of being much younger or a girl.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

... why?

Replace Tumblr with twitter basically

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Presumably for the same reasons one might retweet other porn. I don't know what those are because it's not something I've done before and seems kinda...weird to start with.

Twitter will get a slap on the wrist for this and definitely no other tech giants will do anything about Twitter as a consequence. For example Apple/Google won't pull their apps from phones, Amazon won't cut them off (significant parts of Twitter are run on AWS), their DNS provider won't kill their domain name, etc, etc.

Because refusing to remove child porn just isn't bad enough, not a real monstrous action like refusing to control legal speech.



Twitter closed something like a quarter million accounts over about 6 months last year for being in essence a large child porn network that they hadn't bothered to do anything about prior. Most of them weren't new accounts, either. I wouldn't be surprised if the main difference here (as far as Twitter's behavior) is that the victim is a not-quite-legal boy instead of being much younger or a girl.

Notable that Tumblr was originally removed from app stores and banned all porn because of abuse images being posted there that weren't in certain known banned content databases and while action was apparently being taken it was deemed to not be getting dealt with fast enough even though when reported i was being removed, unlike twitter.

 

[bluegate]

Replace Tumblr with twitter basically

S'up with the bad Boxxy look?

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

S'up with the bad Boxxy look?

I don't honestly know is the answer to that. I don't think it's deliberate.