A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges that Twitter made money off video clips, which showed a 13-year-old engaged in sex acts, a form of child sexual abuse material, or child porn.
The now 17 who lives in Florida and identified only as John Doe and was between 13 and 14 years old when sex traffickers, posing as a 16-year-old female classmate, started chatting with him on Snapchat.
Doe and the traffickers allegedly exchanged nude photos before the conversation turned to blackmail: If the teen didn’t share more sexually graphic photos and videos, the explicit material he’d already sent would be shared with his “parents, coach, pastor” and others.
According to the suit, Doe initially complied under duress and sent videos of himself performing sex acts with other children. But he eventually blocked the traffickers and they stopped harassing him.
Then at some point in 2019, the videos surfaced on Twitter under two accounts that were known to share child sexual abuse material, court papers allege. Over the next month, the videos would be reported to Twitter at least three times — first on Dec. 25, 2019 — but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved.
Court records show that Doe became aware of the tweets in January 2020 because they’d been viewed widely by his classmates, which subjected him to “teasing, harassment, vicious bullying” and led him to become “suicidal.”
While Doe’s parents contacted the school and made police reports, he filed a complaint with Twitter, saying there were two tweets depicting child pornography of himself and they needed to be removed because they were illegal, harmful and were in violation of the site’s policies.
However several attempts to get Twitter to remove the videos were met with silence.
Finally on January 28, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn’t be taking down the material. “Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” the response reads, according to the lawsuit. “If you believe there’s a potential copyright infringement, please start a new report. If the content is hosted on a third-party website, you’ll need to contact that website’s support team to report it. Your safety is the most important thing, and if you believe you are in danger, we encourage you to contact your local authorities.”
Doe appeared shocked in his published response. “What do you mean you don’t see a problem?" The teen wrote back to Twitter. "We both are minors right now and were minors at the time these videos were taken. We both were 13 years of age. 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.”
Two days later, Doe’s mom was connected with an agent from the Department of Homeland Security through a mutual contact who successfully had the videos removed on Jan. 30, the suit states.
“Only after this take-down demand from a federal agent did Twitter suspend the user accounts that were distributing the CSAM and report the CSAM to the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children,” states the suit, filed by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and two law firms. “This is directly in contrast to what their automated reply message and User Agreement state they will do to protect children.”
The law suit also alleges that Twitter knowingly hosts creeps who use the platform to exchange child porn material and profits from it by including ads interspersed between tweets advertising or requesting the material.
Critics pointed out that the claim is easy to prove as a quick search of Twitter returns posts of creepy and sexually exploitative sex photos and videos which the left-wing social media network seems to not have any problems with.
"Twitter once locked my account for tweeting this [picture of nude Hunter Biden] for the same reason, then I was forced to remove it," Kiyagare writes on Gab. "WTF is Twitter's policy? It's more like Jack Dorsey's personal favor Twitter's playing God here Bust it out already."
Others pointed out that Twitter is too busy banning conservatives for expressing opinions to remove child porn videos from its platform.
"Republicans get banned, president gets banned, but child abusers are welcome and kids have to fight oligarchs for their safety," writes Marie.