Technology industry

Innovative technology can help curb the sharp growth of child sexual abuse online

Why is this needed?

Safety technology can prevent, detect, block, report and remove illegal and exploitative material, live streaming and grooming. Technology tools can also be used to deter and detect offenders and identify and protect victims.

Technology can also be used to identify some of the hard problems that are preventing progress. Online tools can work many times faster than humans to identify and detect abusive material, as well as track down platforms and websites used to share this material. Safety technology can also be used to assess risks and help limit the vulnerability of children online.

The technology industry can contribute to building a safer internet for children if:

It puts in place procedures to quickly remove child sexual exploitation and abuse material when a company confirms its presence on its service.

It sets up processes to enable the timely identification and reporting to authorities of child sexual exploitation and abuse online.

It develops tools, using technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, to prevent, detect, block, report and remove illegal and exploitative material, livestreaming and grooming.

It carries out risk and safety assessments across platforms, in terms of both the risk to children but also for offender management.

It ensures child safety issues are paramount in the development and delivery of products and services, and they are integrated into appropriate corporate policies, procedures and processes.

It regularly publishes transparency reports on the detection and prevention of child sexual exploitation and abuse online.

You can find more detailed information about how the technology industry can help tackle child sexual abuse online in our frameworks, the Model National Response and the Global Strategic Response, and their online guides.

What is being done in this area?

Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Voluntary Principles

Developed by the five Country Ministerial government partners (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States), these Voluntary Principles provide a high-level, best practice framework for online platforms and service providers in their efforts to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse online.

Voluntary Framework for Industry Transparency

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During our latest Global Summit, the Tech Coalition launched this framework, which offers guidance to tech companies on providing transparency reports on their efforts to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse online.

The role of age verification

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Developed by Yoti and WeProtect Global Alliance, this intelligence briefing explores the role that age assurance can play in safeguarding children, the current regulatory landscape around age and different methods of age assurance. 

Safety by Design initiative

eSafety

This eSafety‘s initiative encourages technology companies to anticipate, detect and eliminate the proliferation of online harms.

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