The National Council for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) published last Wednesday (24/02) a report with frightening numbers: in 2020, 20.307.216 images containing child sexual abuse were published on Facebook e Instagram.
The absurd number was confirmed by the Facebook group in January of this year, and is equivalent to a 31% increase compared to the results of 2019, when social networks registered 16 million images. This result for 2020 places the platforms with the highest number of detections of inappropriate content, almost four times more than the second place, Google, with 546,704 photos. Right behind comes the Snapchat (144.095), a ecosystem (96.776), or Twitter (65.062) and the Tiktok (22.692).
Zuckerberg's platform went ahead and explained that they were updating detection mechanics of images with inappropriate content for children (sexual or otherwise), by combining context between the image and the caption. A company representative claims that “99% of the content is found and taken down before it even reaches the moderators”.
Pandemic worsened the scenario
According to NCMEC, a potential reason for the increase in the publication and distribution of child abuse content on Facebook and other similar sites is directly linked to Covid-19. Initially, more time spent in confinement led people to share this type of material more. At the same time, more users on social media began to report the content.
The 160 companies listed by NCMEC – which include the figures in this article – will voluntarily provide their data to US authorities to help combat child abuse. Social networks, however, are one step behind the rings of inappropriate material sharing, as there is no local law requiring platforms to actively search for content containing pedophilia.
Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. Business Insider
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