According to court documents, Twitter has been sued for allegedly refusing to remove child pornography from site its. The plaintiff is a minor (John Doe) who was tricked into sending indecent images of sexual content to criminals posing as a 16-year-old girl from his school. Later, the scammers began blackmailing Doe by saying they would show the images to his parents, coach, and others in the community if he didn't send them more videos and photos.
According to the lawsuit, the videos sent by the minor were posted on Twitter in 2019. In December 2019, a person reported the account that had posted the videos, but Twitter allegedly took no action against the account.
The minor discovered that his videos had been posted on Twitter and had been seen by some of his friends and classmates. “Due to the release of these videos, he faced teasing, harassment, bullying and had suicidal tendencies,” the lawsuit said.
John Doe filed a lawsuit for the videos on January 21, 2020. Twitter said it needed evidence to confirm that it was the person depicted in the videos, which it received. John Doe's mother filed two complaints about the child pornography material the next day.
“Thank you for reaching out to us. We reviewed the content and found no violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” Twitter said in an email on January 28.
The lawsuit alleges that Twitter ignored another email the minor sent it and only removed the content when an agent from the Department of Homeland Security requested its removal. The child pornography content was not removed until Jan. 30, and had already been retweeted more than 2,000 times with more than 167,000 views.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Haba Law Firm and Matiasic Firm filed the lawsuit in the U.S. for the Northern District of California.
“As the John Doe case demonstrates, Twitter has not committed to removing child sexual abuse material from platform its,” Peter Gentala, senior counsel for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement. “Even worse, Twitter contributes to and benefits from the sexual exploitation of countless individuals, due to its harmful practices and platform design. Despite its public claims to the contrary, Twitter is filled with child pornography content , and its management does little or nothing to prevent it.”
Source: The Daily Caller
