Facebook reports journalists to police for flagging possible child porn — on Facebook
Facebook reported journalists at the BBC to police for sending them images related to suspected child pornography on the site, even though Facebook had requested examples, the news organization reported Tuesday.
The BBC, which was following up on a past investigation of child exploitation on the social networking site, had found dozens of recent photos of children in sexualized positions and with suggestions of more obscene content, it reported. Other troubling content on Facebook included pages “explicitly for men with a sexual interest in children” or groups for “stolen images of real children” and one apparent screenshot of a video with an explicit request for the full “child pornography” clip.
BBC journalists flagged those images as inappropriate through the platform to test the site’s moderation policies, but more than 80 percent remained on the site because Facebook said they did not violate “community standards,” the BBC reported. When the news organization reached out to Facebook for an interview about those moderation practices, Facebook’s director of policy Simon Milner asked for examples of the content it had found before being interviewed.
When the BBC sent the examples, Facebook reported its journalists to the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency instead, the BBC said.
“It is against the law for anyone to distribute images of child exploitation,” Facebook said in a statement sent to the BBC. “When the BBC sent us such images we followed our industry's standard practice and reported them to Ceop [the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Center in the United Kingdom]. We also reported the child exploitation images that had been shared on our own platform. This matter is now in the hands of the authorities.”
Facebook also said that it had “carefully reviewed the content referred to us and have now removed all items that were illegal or against our standards.”
Facebook’s help center on its site tells users to contact law enforcement immediately “if you see images on Facebook of a child being physically abused or sexually exploited, as well as to report the content to Facebook. It warns that if content is identified as possible child abuse or exploitation, it may remain on the site “to aid in the possible identification and rescue of victims of child physical abuse” though the site would add a warning message and over-18 filter.
“Images and videos of children being physically abused or sexually exploited are against Facebook policies,” it adds.
The BBC's director of editorial policy, David Jordan, criticized Facebook for sending the images to police when they had requested the examples themselves.
“One can only assume that the Facebook executives were unwilling or certainly reluctant to engage in an interview or a debate about why these images are available on the Facebook site,” he said in the BBC’s story.
This story was originally published March 7, 2017 at 7:46 AM with the headline "Facebook reports journalists to police for flagging possible child porn — on Facebook."