5 days ago
Coordinated network amplifies child sex abuse on X, researchers warn
European researchers have uncovered what they believe is a coordinated network to sell and distribute sexually explicit images of children on the social media platform X.
The nonprofit Alliance4Europe found at least 150 accounts that shared child sexual assault materials (CSAM) on the platform during a four-day period in July. The report estimates the coordinated network started operations around May 17.
The researchers estimate that the network shared 'millions' of posts and that the 'operation continued largely undisturbed' on X, which is run by billionaire Elon Musk.
The report comes after an American court revived part of a lawsuit against X last week that accused the company of negligence for allegedly failing to promptly report a video with explicit images of young boys to the US Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
In the European Union, meanwhile, debate is ongoing over how best to handle the deluge of child abuse content online while still respecting people's digital privacy rights.
Amplified posts led to platforms to buy child sex abuse content
According to the analysis, the criminal network flooded specific pornography-related hashtags with child abuse content that was then amplified or disseminated by new accounts. These accounts would comment or repost the content to boost engagement.
The hashtags were used as 'aggregators' of child sexual abuse content, 'making it easy to discover other flooded hashtags and new CSAM accounts,' the report found.
Some of the posts were extremely graphic. They included videos that depicted children who were 'sexually assaulted, raped, or … otherwise explicitly exposed,' the report found.
Many of the shared posts included links to online Telegram or Discord chat spaces, dating websites, or sites selling folders of child sex abuse content.
One of the amplified pages linked to an active Bitcoin wallet address that had amassed $660 (€573) over 23 transactions, which the report said 'potentially confirm[s] that the operation is reaching people who are buying access to the content'.
'New accounts are created continuously'
When researchers flagged two of the network's initial posts to X, they said the platform started removing pieces of content more quickly.
X started blocking users that it believed were underage from accessing the content. This hampered, but did not stop the operation's activities, the researchers found.
'New accounts are created continuously, even suggesting some sort of automation, providing continuous access to CSAM content,' the report said.
The researchers said X's 'whack-a-mole' approach to removing illegal content may actually make it easier for these posts to spread – and harder to gather evidence.
'We have zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation'
Euronews Next contacted X to ask for comment on Alliance4Europe's findings, and for clarity on whether the company has made any recent changes related to CSAM content on their platform. We did not receive an immediate reply.
However in June, X's safety team said in a statement that it has 'zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation in any form'.
The platform said it launched new CSAM 'hash matching efforts,' that let its team 'match media content quickly and securely' without sacrificing the user's privacy.
Hashing is a technique used by an algorithm to create fingerprints of files on a computer system, and comparing one hash to another stored in a database is called hash matching.
When X does find child sex abuse content, it works 'swiftly' to suspend the account and report it to the US NCMEC. In 2024, X said it sent 686,176 reports to the centre and suspended 4.5 million CSAM-related accounts.
This led to 94 arrests and one conviction, the platform added. NCMEC confirmed these numbers as their latest in a statement to Euronews Next.
'Weve invested in advanced technology and tools to stop bad actors from distributing, searching for, or engaging with exploitative content across all media formats on X,' the company said in June.
