Social media giant Facebook has launched its public safety campaign against Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in 10 countries, including the Philippines, to prevent and eradicate sexual exploitation and abuse of children online.
The #ReportItDontShareIt campaign aims to raise awareness on how the public can help prevent the revictimization of affected children by reporting CSAM content to Facebook and law enforcement and not sharing these malicious content.
“At Facebook, our primary goal is to make sure people are safe,” said Malina Enlund, Facebook Safety Policy Manager for Asia Pacific.
Over the past year, Facebook consulted experts in child exploitation, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Professor Ethel Quayle, a world-leading clinical psychologist who specializes in sex offenders, to improve the company’s understanding of why people share child exploitation content.
A research conducted by Facebook on its CyberTips with US-based NCMEC evaluated 150 accounts that were reported for uploading CSAM in July and August of 2020 and in January 2021.
Results have shown that more than 75 percent of the materials did not exhibit malicious intent to harm a child, but appeared to be shared for other reasons, such as outrage or poor humor.
Data also showed that more than 90 percent of CSAM were reshares of previously reported content.
While this data indicates that the number of pieces of content does not equal the number of victims, the same content, potentially slightly altered, is being shared repeatedly.
“One victim is one too many. Preventing and eradicating online child sexual exploitation and abuse requires a cross-industry approach, and Facebook is committed to doing our part to protect children on and off our apps. We are taking a research-informed approach to develop effective solutions that disrupt the sharing of child exploitation material,” Enlund said.
In the Philippines, Facebook has partnered with the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT), the Inter-Agency Council Against Child Pornography (IACACP), Stairway Foundation, and Child Rights Network in rolling out the campaign.
“As part of our role to monitor all anti-human trafficking efforts of the government, we support this important initiative in helping Filipinos better understand that the best way to address CSAM is to report it. By alerting child abuse images or videos to Facebook and law enforcement agencies such as the IACAT, it gives us evidence to take action against offenders and provide support for the victims,” said Yvette Coronel, Deputy Executive Director for Legal of the IACAT Secretariat.