Anyone who wants to learn about human trafficking and/or take action to register their concern with the top companies that facilitate, enable, and profit from sexual abuse and exploitation, should take a few minutes to read the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) Dirty Dozen List website. Since its inception in 2013, the annual NCOSE campaign calls out 12 mainstream entities and provides details to galvanize the public to call on corporations, government agencies, and organizations to change problematic policies and practices. Concerned individuals, especially parents, can be informed on the threats and add their voice to the NCOSE campaign by sending emails to each of the entities.
On 8 Mar 2022, the 2022 List revealed the following entities and problems:
Discord: Consistently fails to address the extensive sexually graphic, violent, and exploitative content on its thousands of private and public channels. Discord’s inadequate age verification and moderation procedures means millions of children and teen users are left with near-unmitigated exposure to child sexual abuse material, nonconsensual pornography trading, and the predatory grooming that are rampant on its platform.
Etsy: Search results recommendations include pornographic merchandise, image-based sexual abuse, misogynistic apparel, and sex dolls – including ones resembling children and young teens. Etsy’s mechanism for removing such content from search results is highly ineffective and often causes more of this content to surface.
Google: Facilitates access to real and depicted content of sexual abuse, including graphic videos of sex trafficking, child sexual abuse, and nonconsensually recorded/shared content, as well as illegal and socially damaging-themed content; drives users to pornography sites when they search for themes of rape, racism, incest, sexual abuse of minors, and other illegally-themed or socially damaging-themed pornography; insufficient reporting and removal mechanisms for nonconsensual pornography.
Kanakuk: Years of child sexual abuse at Kanakuk Kamps have been covered up by the organization.
Kik: The privacy and anonymity, ease of connecting with strangers (including adults) in the multitude of public group chats, and sexually explicit interactions on the platform, has made it difficult for the law to be involved when reports are made. Kik currently relies on users to make reports and moderate the platform for bad actors. Law enforcement has been sounding the alarm for years about Kik being a stomping ground for predators, yet Kik hasn’t made any substantive improvements to keep kids safe.
Meta: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all consistently under fire as primary places for grooming, sextortion, child sexual abuse materials, sex trafficking, and a host of other crimes and ills. Meta is prioritizing new projects and products, all while pursuing increased, sweeping encryption without sufficient provisions for child online safety which will aid predators in escaping detection and accountability.
Netflix: Produces rampant sexual objectification and glamorization of abuse content with a marked increase in graphic sex scenes and gratuitous nudity. Netflix continues a trend of normalizing the sexualization of children and whitewashing the violence and exploitation in prostitution.
OnlyFans: Sex buyers and pimps maximize buying and selling people behind the security of a paywall. Yet survivors, whistleblowers, police, and investigative journalists have uncovered child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking, rape videos, and a host of other crimes, making the case clear: OnlyFans is a safe haven for exploitation.
Reddit: Among the many user-created communities (subreddits) are countless sexually explicit images and videos posted without consent (image-based sexual abuse), child sexual abuse material (child pornography), hardcore pornography, prostitution, and the likely facilitation of sex trafficking. Not only does Reddit turn a blind eye to illegal and harmful content on its site, survivor requests to remove images of their abuse go unanswered.
Twitter: Pedophiles and other predators go to Twitter to trade in criminal content such as child sexual abuse and nonconsensual pornography. The platform is rampant with accounts and posts functioning as advertisements for commercial sex—including prostitution. Twitter claims it cannot be held accountable for disseminating illegal material and refuses to remove verified child sex abuse material from its site when asked by victims.
Verasign: While some other registrars and registries are disrupting domains associated with child sexual abuse material, Verisign fails to take meaningful action and instead inhibits attempts to protect children.
Visa: Visa re-initiated its relationship with MindGeek (Pornhub’s parent company) and other pornography websites and failed to follow the example of Mastercard in requiring that sites hosting sexually explicit material implement common sense measures to prevent and remove illegal content. Visa also allows transactions for brothels and prostitution websites.
The webpage for each entity provides additional information, videos, proof, and related news articles on problems, entity background and policies, recommendations for improvement, and most importantly, a form to take action by sending an email to entity executives. It just takes a few minutes to send an email to each entity.
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