Facebook Battles The BBC Over Child Porn

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Facebook is under attack on all sides these days, it seems. German authorities are attacking it over hate speech while problems with fake news continue as well. Now the social network is also facing off with the BBC over child porn. The major news network blasted it for not doing enough to fight groups that share child porn online, but then it took the battle to a whole new level—by calling the police on the BBC.

Facebook ignores the BBC’s reports

The British media network said today that it had reported “dozens” of disturbing images of children to Facebook, but the social network did not even remove more than 80% of them. The BBC said it asked to speak with an executive at Facebook at it found that just 18 of the 100 images it had flagged via the “report button” had been taken down.

The executive agreed to be interviewed on one condition: that the media outlet show examples of the obscene images it had reported. Among the Facebook pages the BBC reported was one specifically targeting men that are sexually interested in children. Other pages include some with names such as “hot xxxx schoolgirls.”

Pornography wasn’t the only reported problem related to the exploitation of children on the social network. The BBC also flagged an image that looked like it had come from a video showing child abuse and reported groups that included users who seemed to be talking about trading images that appeared to show child abuse.

Facebook reports the BBC to the police

Despite the media outlet’s compliance with the executive’s request, Facebook canceled the interview and reported the BBC journalists to the National Crime Agency in the U.K. The social network’s policy director said in a statement sent to CNN that it’s “against the law for anyone to distribute images of child exploitation.”

“When the BBC sent us such images we followed our industry’s standard practice and reported them,” he told CNN. “We also reported the child exploitation images that had been shared on our own platform.”

The social network also said it had removed all of the illegal images and those that were against its standards.

Facebook purposely dodging the media?

It seems as if Facebook was purposely trying to dodge the interview with the BBC and had planned all along to report the media outlet’s journalists to the police. After all, it demanded that examples of what had been posted be sent in order for the interview to be granted. If the BBC refused to send the images, it would not receive the interview, and since it did, it also didn’t get the interview and, on top of that, the police were called.

By the policy director’s statement, Facebook should report itself to the police because it has distributed child exploitation images, although it would claim that it’s not at fault because its platform was used by others to distribute them. This seems like nothing but an underhanded way of avoiding media attention, but instead, the company is unleashing a torrent of reports about its behavior.

British lawmakers question effectiveness of Facebook’s methods

The social network’s outrageous treatment of journalists who were trying to keep children from being exploited has caused outrage among British lawmakers as well. Commons Media Committee Chairman Damian Collins told the BBC that he had “grave doubts” about the effectiveness of Facebook’s content monitoring systems.

The social network’s automated replies to most of the media outlet’s reported images was that they didn’t breach “community standards. Although Facebook’s own rules state that convicted sex offenders may not create accounts, the BBC found five convicted pedophiles who had profiles and reported them to Facebook using its system, but none of the pages were shut down.

Collins said he found this “very disturbing” and the content “unacceptable.”

“I think it raises the question of how can users make effective complaints to Facebook about content that is disturbing, shouldn’t be on the site, and have confidence that that will be acted upon,” he told the BBC.

Anne Longfield, the U.K.’s Children’s Commissioner, said she was “very disturbed” by what the media outlet showed her and that after a year of supposed improvements to the reporting system, images of child exploitation are still being shared. She feels that the social network’s moderation system isn’t effective and questions whether humans are even screening the reports from users.

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