(Natural News) Twitter is happy to press the censor button on a world leader who the company disagrees with politically, but it’s a lot more difficult to convince them to take down child pornography.
In fact, the social media platform is so reluctant to remove such material that a victim of sex trafficking is suing Twitter in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on the grounds that they knowingly received and distributed child pornography from which they could benefit.
In the court filing, “John Doe” alleges that he was solicited for sex trafficking as a minor. He eventually managed to escape the situation, but material showing his abuse was passed along via Twitter. The video in question depicts the minor boy and another minor. It was retweeted thousands of times and had at least 167,000 views.
The suit states: “This lawsuit seeks to shine a light on how Twitter has enabled and profited from CSAM (child sexual abuse material) on its platform, choosing profits over people, money over the safety of children, and wealth at the expense of human freedom and human dignity.”
The court filing claims that traffickers convinced the boy to provide explicit images to a Snapchat account that he had been falsely led to believe belonged to a 16-year-old female classmate. Once the traffickers obtained the material, they blackmailed the boy into providing even more sexual photos and videos of him performing sex acts, which they then shared on Twitter. They told him they would share the initial photos with his “parents, coach, pastor” if he did not comply.
He later learned from classmates that the videos had been distributed on Twitter. He faced teasing, bullying and harassment and considered taking his own life. He eventually told his parents about the situation and sought their assistance. His mother took immediate action, contacting local law enforcement, school officials and Twitter directly.
Twitter ignored victim’s pleas to remove illegal images and videos
According to the suit, Twitter refused to take down the illegal material when they were first notified of the boy’s age and abuse. Instead, they continued to promote and profit from it. Although he and his mother reached out to Twitter several times about the content, they failed to take action protecting the young boy until an agent from the Department of Homeland Security got involved.
The plaintiffs in this case are accusing Twitter of violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000 by benefiting from a sex trafficking venture. They also violated codes against child abuse, negligence, and sexual exploitation, the suit claims.
The filing includes communication between John Doe, his mother and Twitter. In one email, he replied to a message from Twitter in which they claimed they did not find a violation of their policies by saying: “What do you mean you don’t see a problem? We both are minors right now and were minors at the time these videos were taken. We both were 13 years of age.”
He added: “We were baited, harassed, and threatened to take these videos that are now being posted without our permission. We did not authorize these videos AT ALL and they need to be taken down.” Although he included the case number from his local law enforcement agency, Twitter remained unswayed.
Silencing conservatives while leaving abusers unchecked
Apparently, Twitter is far more interested in silencing conservatives than child abusers. A partner at the Haba Law Firm, Lisa Haba, told Fox News that Twitter has recently shown the world just how much they are able to police their platform and what they can do with the technology they possess.
Alluding to content moderation after the election, she added that “you would think that amongst everything they are able to police that there would be a premium priority on the protection of children. They literally have policies stating that they’ll do that, but their practices say another word.”
Twitter’s censorship of conservatives is appalling enough, but their inaction against child abusers plunges them firmly into unforgivable territory.
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