Combating Child Sexual Exploitation On Social Media

The following post was submitted by Tagged, one of our technology partners. It is part of a series of posts written by our technology partner organizations on the issue of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation. Tagged is a social discovery platform that allows its users to browse the profiles of other members, play games and share tags and virtual gifts. Tagged has 100 million members.

Social media and networking sites are commonly used to connect with long lost friends, to keep in touch with family, to post favorite recipes, to search for new jobs and even to meet new people. Regardless of how you use them, it’s widely accepted that social sites have enriched almost all of our lives in one way or another.

Child Sexual Exploitation on Social Media

Despite being designed for different purposes, the vast majority of social media sites have been used in attempts to sexually exploit children. As a result, technology companies have joined together to combat this problem. Tagged.com and other tech companies work together to share brain power, best practices, and “hashes” — shortened data packets that represent known bad content — in an effort to disrupt the use of social media to abuse one of society’s most vulnerable populations, our children.

Tagged and the Thorn Technology Task Force

The opportunity to work with Thorn by joining the Technology Task Force was an easy decision for Tagged.com, and has been rewarding so far. Joining the Task Force was a natural move for Tagged since we are passionate about protecting children, and have set aside dedicated resources for the sole purpose of keeping our site safe from malicious use.

Recently, Tagged.com worked with Thorn to formulate proactive outreach messaging to potential victims of human trafficking. Determining whether or not an individual is a victim of human trafficking can be challenging, and is often subjective. Therefore, the basis for whether or not to share the messaging depends solely on specific indicators/behaviors. Tagged.com leads in this space and takes the position that if providing resources helps one person get out of child sex trafficking, the effort is well worthwhile.

—

Jill Eisenhart is Manager of Partner Services and Customer Advocacy at social discovery website, Tagged.com.