Top brands block ads on Twitter due to child exploitation

At least 30 major advertisers have pulled out of advertising on Twitter after it was revealed their ads were appearing alongside tweets promoting illegal child abuse content.

For example, a promoted tweet from Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in Texas was shown alongside venomous tweets related to child sexual abuse.

Advertisers are fighting back against Twitter

Reuters reported that at least 30 major brands suspended their accounts when it was revealed that their promoted tweets were appearing alongside toxic tweets.

A Twitter spokesperson was quoted as saying that the cybersecurity firm’s research and conclusions (which examined tweets and accounts in the first twenty days of September 2022) were not representative of Twitter’s efforts to combat unauthorized activity.

But the Reuters article cited several big brand advertisers who were notified that their ads had appeared alongside the venomous tweets.

Reuters quoted company CEO Cole Haan as saying:

“We are appalled,” David Maddocks, president of the Cole Haan brand, told Reuters after being informed that the company’s ads were appearing alongside such tweets.

“Either Twitter will fix it, or we’ll fix it any way we can, which includes not buying ads on Twitter.”

Twitter’s inability to accurately detect toxic content

The background to Twitter’s toxic content problem first came to light in an article published by The Verge.

The article describes Twitter’s project to create an OnlyFans-like platform where users can pay to share sexually explicit content.

Before launching the new service, Twitter tasked a group of employees with testing whether Twitter could be successful in weeding out harmful content so that the platform did not turn into a place to share illegal content.

This group of employees was called the Red Team.

Twitter’s project was halted when the red team found Twitter’s inability to detect offensive and toxic content.

According to reports Article by The Verge:

“What the Red Team discovered derailed the project: Twitter could not safely allow adult creators to sell subscriptions because the company did not—and still does not—effectively police harmful sexual content on the platform.

So in the spring of 2022, Twitter decided it was ill-equipped to launch the service, and it was delayed.

However, according to cybersecurity firm Ghost Data, Twitter continued to have trouble catching fake users and accounts that were sharing unauthorized content.

Ghost Data conducted an investigation in September 2022 to find out how widespread the problem of child exploitation on Twitter is.

Starting with a group of known child exploitation accounts, they mapped toxic accounts through followers’ linked social connections between the accounts, eventually identifying more than 500 accounts responsible for nearly 5,000 tweets related to illegal child abuse activities.

The researchers found that all of these accounts were in English and that they did not search Twitter for child abuse in other languages.

They found that further account research in non-English accounts may reveal even more users sharing child abuse content.

Researchers argue that Twitter is ineffective

A startling finding from the report is that Twitter took action against just over 25% of accounts it found to be sharing explicit child abuse content during the survey period, which covered the first twenty days of September 2022.

The researchers wrote (PDF):

“We observed that in the first 20 days of September, Twiter (sic) suspended less than 30% (27.5%) of users who publicly shared links, material and references to child pornography.

To date, more than 400 users are still active after the “cleanse”.

Many of these users have been active for months.”

The researchers concluded that while they identified a number of illegal activities and accounts on Twitter, they estimate that this is only a fraction of the true extent of the problem.

They noted that Twitter could do a better job of preventing toxic activity:

“These results confirm a troubling problem that has already been discovered by internal employees and exposed by the online media: Twiter (sic) cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and its executives are doing next to nothing to solve this disaster.

We also found evidence that such permissive pornographic content policies encourage users to post non-consensual rape videos, not to mention minors trying to sell their own nudity or sexual content.

… Probably a modest investment and a dedicated team, even using our own basic techniques, would be sufficient (sic) to simply locate and drastically reduce illegal activities…”

This conclusion, reached by cybersecurity firm Ghost Data, appears to contradict a statement issued by Twitter and reported by Reuters that Twitter has “zero tolerance” for such activity, as it has been months since Twitter’s red team found problems in detecting toxic content.

Reuters also reported that Twitter said it was hiring more employees to “implement solutions.”

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Quotes

Read Ghost Data’s full cybersecurity report (PDF)

Read the Reuters report

EXCLUSIVE Brands blast Twitter for ads alongside child porn accounts

Read The Verge’s report on how Twitter ditched competitor OnlyFans

How Twitter’s Child Porn Problem Ruined Plans for Competitor OnlyFans

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