Bloomberg Law: US Supreme Court Turns Away Social Media Sex Trafficking Case. “The US Supreme Court turned away an appeal from victims of child pornography who claimed Reddit Inc. knowingly facilitates and benefits from images of child sexual abuse. The justices without comment left in place a ruling that affirmed Reddit can’t be held liable for violating sex trafficking laws when people use its platform to post pictures of minors being abused.”
Tag Archives: sex trafficking
San Francisco Chronicle: Court tosses lawsuit accusing Twitter of profiting from sex trafficking
San Francisco Chronicle: Court tosses lawsuit accusing Twitter of profiting from sex trafficking. “A federal appeals court on Wednesday dismissed a suit accusing Twitter of profiting from sex trafficking by allowing a paying customer to post nude photos of two 13-year-old boys. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals relied on a 1996 federal law that shields tech platforms from liability for content posted by others, a law now under review in the Supreme Court.”
BuzzFeed News: Thousands Of Fake Twitter Accounts Were Made To Support Andrew Tate
BuzzFeed News: Thousands Of Fake Twitter Accounts Were Made To Support Andrew Tate. “Escaping content featuring misogynist influencer Andrew Tate can be hard on social media — and according to new research, that’s because thousands of accounts posting favorable content about him are actually bots. The Center for Countering Digital Hate announced on Wednesday that it had found 4,621 fake Twitter accounts created to promote Tate. The bot accounts tweeted 15,202 times in support of the former kickboxer, who is in pretrial detention in Romania.”
Andrew Tate arrest: TikTok and Twitter under fire over false posts from fans (The Guardian)
The Guardian: Andrew Tate arrest: TikTok and Twitter under fire over false posts from fans. “Social media firms are under fire this weekend for allowing the spread of misinformation by followers of ‘king of toxic masculinity’ Andrew Tate after his arrest in connection with a human trafficking investigation. In the hours after his detention, TikTok and Twitter were flooded with posts falsely claiming he had been freed and conspiracy theories saying he had been set up, Observer analysis shows.”
North Carolina State University: New Computational Tools to Help Target Sex, Labor Trafficking Operations
North Carolina State University: New Computational Tools to Help Target Sex, Labor Trafficking Operations. “Researchers from North Carolina State University collaborated with a counter-human trafficking organization, Global Emancipation Network, to develop computational models that can help fight human trafficking. The models draw on publicly available data to identify massage businesses that are most likely to be violating laws related to sex trafficking and labor trafficking.”
New York Times: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground
New York Times: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground. “To combat the ills of the internet, federal lawmakers have increasingly focused on a decades-old law that shields tech companies like Facebook and YouTube from liability for content posted by their users. Last year, lawmakers approved chipping away at the law, voting overwhelmingly for the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, which holds tech platforms accountable when people use their sites for sex-trafficking schemes…. But now, as the real-world effects of the sex-trafficking change take hold, some experts and politicians say the results are not all positive.”
New York Times: Sex Trafficking via Facebook Sets Off a Lawyer’s Novel Crusade
New York Times: Sex Trafficking via Facebook Sets Off a Lawyer’s Novel Crusade. “Tech has led to a lot of trouble lately: hate speech, financial scams, undermined elections. Yet tech companies have largely avoided legal consequences, thanks to a landmark 1996 law that protects them from lawsuits. Now that federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, has a new threat: Annie McAdams, a personal-injury lawyer in Houston.”
OneZero: How Artificial Intelligence Is Tracking Sex Traffickers
OneZero: How Artificial Intelligence Is Tracking Sex Traffickers. “Traffic Jam is part of a cluster of new tech tools bringing machine learning and artificial intelligence to the fight against sex trafficking, a battle that over the nearly 20 years since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was signed into law has been stuck in a weary stalemate.”
EurekAlert: UToledo study details link between social media and sex trafficking
EurekAlert: UToledo study details link between social media and sex trafficking . “Social media is increasingly being exploited to contact, recruit and sell children for sex, according to a study by The University of Toledo Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute.”
The Verge: Sex trafficking bill is turning into a proxy war over Google
I have been seeing more and more mentions in my Google Alerts of SESTA, and I didn’t have a good grip on what it was so I went looking for an explanation. I feel a little more educated after reading this article from The Verge. “Since the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017 was introduced in the Senate in August, tech companies and advocacy groups have been mobilizing in a battle to control its message. Digital rights organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have called it ‘disastrous for free speech online,’ asking its members to call their representatives in Congress. Meanwhile, supporters of the bill have emerged from unlikely quarters — including tech giant Oracle and Hollywood studio 21st Century Fox — and are using the legislation as an opportunity to take shots at Google.”