Top technology companies, including Google, OpenAI and Stability AI, have agreed to work with anti-child sexual abuse organization Thorn to combat the spread of child sexual abuse images. The court’s decisions in Ferber and Ashcroft could be used to argue that any AI-generated sexually explicit image of real minors should not be protected as free speech given the psychological harms inflicted on the real minors. The court’s ruling in Ashcroft may permit AI-generated sexually explicit images of fake minors. The city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was shaken by revelations in December 2023 that two local teenage boys shared hundreds of nude images of girls in their community over a private chat on the social chat platform Discord. Witnesses said the photos easily could have been mistaken for real ones, but they were fake.

Hertfordshire Police told us that a 14-year-old girl had managed to use her grandmother’s passport and bank details to sell explicit images. Leah’s age was directly reported to OnlyFans by an anonymous social media account in late January. The company says this led to a moderator reviewing the account and double-checking her ID. She told her mum she originally intended to only post pictures of her feet after making money selling them on Snapchat. But this soon escalated to explicit videos of her masturbating and playing with sex toys. But BBC News has also heard from child protection experts across the UK and US, spoken to dozens of police forces and schools, and obtained anonymised extracts from Childline counsellor notes, about underage experiences on OnlyFans.

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Court says secretly filming nude young girls in bathroom isn’t child porn

There is no obligation for a website to investigate, but OnlyFans told the BBC it checks social media when verifying accounts. According to Firman, it is not only users and the government who must strive to minimize negative content and harmful effects on digital platforms. Platform providers are also responsible for ensuring that their services are friendly and safe for all people. Child pornography videos are widely circulating on social media, closed groups, messaging applications, and the dark web.

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Child sexual abuse does not have to involve physical contact.

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Intervening early is very important for the benefit of the sexually aggressive child – as the legal risk only increases as they get older. The report was produced after a search of 874 Telegram links reported to SaferNet by internet users as containing images of child sexual abuse and exploitation. SaferNet analyzed them and found that 149 of them were still active and had not been restricted by the platform. In addition, the NGO identified a further 66 links that had never been reported before and which also contained criminal content. A report drawn up by SaferNet, an NGO active in promoting human rights online since 2005, found that 1.25 million users of the messaging app Telegram are in group chats or channels that sell and share images of child sexual abuse and pornographic material. One of these communities alone—which was still active when the survey was made—had 200 thousand users.

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  • Suspects were identified after crime agencies traced the site’s cryptocurrency transactions back to them.
  • Alternatively, they may also be used as a threat or manipulation tool to get a young person to participate in sexual or illegal activities.
  • Despite the lack of physical contact, it is still considered abusive behavior for an adult to be engaging with a minor in this way.
  • This can often feel confusing for a young person as it may feel as if this person truly cares about them.
  • They also “restrict specific sensitive media, such as adult nudity and sexual behaviour, for viewers who are under 18 or viewers who do not include a birth date on their profile”.

Alternatively, they may also be used as a threat or manipulation tool to get a young person to participate in sexual or child porn illegal activities. Westpac was accused of failing to monitor $11 billion worth of suspicious transactions, including those to the Philippines suspected to be for child sexual exploitation. For decades, law enforcement agencies have worked with major tech companies to identify and remove this kind of material from the web, and to prosecute those who create or circulate it. But the advent of generative artificial intelligence and easy-to-access tools like the ones used in the Pennsylvania case present a vexing new challenge for such efforts. JOHANNESBURG – Police say they cannot specify whether there’s an increase in crimes related to child pornography in the country. Some church congregations are now regularly being warned to watch out for signs of online child sex abuse.