Twitter’s lack of tools to detect child sexual abuse material on its platform stifled its plans to become an OnlyFans competitor, leaked internal documents show
- Internal documents obtained by The Verge state Twitter paused its OnlyFans-style subscription because of concerns over child abuse material
- The report states Twitter does not have the tools needed to identify child pornography on the platform
- Twitter uses a database that can spot such content, but is unable to detect images and videos that are not already in the system
Twitter was said to have been working on an OnlyFans-style subscription earlier this year that would let users sell nude photo and videos, but internal documents obtained by The Verge show the plan was stifled because the firm ‘cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale.’
The statement, according to the report, was made by Twitter’s so-called ‘Red Team’ that included 84 employees tasked with testing the product to ensure it could be done ‘safely and responsibly.’
Along with inadequate tools to detect child pornography, the Red Team determined that allowing more porn on the site would lead to scrutiny from lawmakers and many longtime users may eventually jump ship.
These warnings forced executives to put a pause on its Adult Content Monetization (ACM) until Twitter can create the proper tools to ensure a safe environment.
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Internal documents, obtained by The Verge, suggest Twitter was going to launch an OnlyFans-like subscription but the plan was stopped because it cannot detect and remove all child sexual abuse material
DailyMail.com has contacted Twitter for information.
ACM would let creators share explicit content in which other users pay to view – the same business model as OnlyFans.
OnlyFans, however, has been accused of not preventing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its platform and minors have been found to sell their own explicit content. This suggests that OnlyFans also does not have adequate tools to ensure a safe environment.
DailyMial.com has contacted OnlyFans for more information.
Twitter’s product would work similar to OnlyFans, allowing creators to charge users a fee to view their sexually explicit images and videos
Not only is child pornography said to be an issue, but Twitter also lacked adequate tools to verify both creators and customers were over the age of 18, the documents state.
Twitter does, however, use a database built by Microsoft called PhotoDNA that can identify and remove CSMA, but the system cannot pick up on content that is not already part of the database.
The Microsoft system, developed in 2009, fails to pick up on content not already in its database and is also unable to identify those that have been digitally altered.
Twitter and all similar social media platforms are mandated by law to report child sexual exploitation (CSE) found on their sites to the government-funded National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
The Verge states that NCMEC revealed Twitter reports one million instances of CSE each month and 84 percent contain newly-discovered CSE. All of which would have been overlooked by PhotoDNA.
According to the report, Twitter’s Health team, which focuses on ensure safety on the platform, is said to have warned the company’s executive about the platform’s CSAM problem since February 2021.
This team, which focuses on ensuring the platform is safe, previously alerted the firm that it needs tools to detect CES and urged leadership to make it happen – but it seems this has yet to happen.
‘While the amount of CSE online has grown exponentially, Twitter’s investment in technologies to detect and manage the growth has not,’ begins a February 2021 report from the company’s Health team.
Although Twitter is suffering the same issues as nearly every other social media platform, others have taken the steps and forked over the cash to work on a fix.
META CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is under scrutiny for privacy issues on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, took a jab at Twitter in 2019 when he said: ‘The amount of our budget that goes toward our safety systems I believe is greater than Twitter’s revenue for this whole year.’
OnlyFans was set to ban pornography from its site starting October 2021 in a move ‘to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers,’ an OnlyFans spokesperson confirmed to DailyMail.com last year.
The platform announced the changes on August 20, 2021, but dropped it five days later after intense backlash from creators who said they would lose money and ultimately quit OnlyFans.
Creators receive 80 percent commission on their earnings, while the remaining 20 percent goes to the company, covering ‘referral payments, payment processing, hosting, support, and all other services’.
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