Big tech companies, including Meta, Google and others, have teamed up for a new programme that aims to help fight online child sexual abuse or exploitation.
The programme, called Lantern, is described as the first cross-platform signal-sharing programme for companies to strengthen how they enforce their child safety policies, by the group of participating companies called The Tech Coalition.
Two of today's most urgent threats are online grooming, involving inappropriate sexual contact with children, and financial sextortion targeting young individuals. Predators typically initiate these abuses by masquerading as peers or friendly connections on public forums, subsequently luring their victims into private chats or alternative platforms. Here, they either solicit and share child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or manipulate their victims into making payments by threatening to share their intimate images.
“Signals can be, for example, information tied to policy-violating accounts like email addresses, usernames, CSAM hashes, or keywords used to groom as well as buy and sell CSAM,” read the announcement from Sean Litton, Executive Director, The Tech Coalition.
The statement also added that the signals do not provide any proof of abuse but rather offer clues for further investigation and can be the crucial piece of the puzzle that enables a company to uncover a real-time threat to a child’s safety.
“The programme can enable the increase of prevention and detection capabilities; speed up the identification of threats; build situational awareness of new predatory tactics; and, strengthen reporting to authorities of criminal offences,” it added.
Tech Coalition said that a pilot of the programme saw Meta remove more than 10,000 Facebook profiles, pages and Instagram accounts after data was shared by Mega.
Meta reported the accounts involved to the US-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and shared findings with other platforms for their own investigations.
The companies participating in Lantern so far include Discord, Google, Mega, Meta, Quora, Roblox, Snap, and Twitch.
The announcement of Lantern came on the same day that a former Meta senior engineer told a Senate hearing in Washington that top executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, ignored his warnings that teens were unsafe on the company's platforms.
Arturo Bejar told lawmakers that in an internal survey of 13-15-year-olds on Instagram, 13% of respondents had received unwanted sexual advances on Instagram in the last seven days.
(With inputs from agencies)
Check out our in-depth Market Coverage, Business News & get real-time Stock Market Updates on CNBC-TV18. Also, Watch our channels CNBC-TV18, CNBC Awaaz and CNBC Bajar Live on-the-go!
Stampede-like situation disrupts Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav's joint rally in Uttar Pradesh
May 19, 2024 4:26 PM
Ladakh Lok Sabha election: With Independent candidate's entry, it's now a 3-way contest for BJP and Congress
May 19, 2024 4:01 PM