In a 12-page letter to the Canadian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, a collective of 104 survivors of sexual exploitation and 525 non-governmental organizations from 65 nations called for a criminal investigation into MindGeek. Recently, executives of MindGeek, the parent company of the pornography website Pornhub, testified before a Canadian ethics committee over allegations that it profited off of child sexual abuse, rape, sex-trafficking and non-consensually distributed content. Major social media companies, including Facebook and Instagram, officially ban pornographic content but have been accused of not enforcing their rules consistently. Nealon asserts that Reddit should use a portion of its vast profits to make the platform safer for all users.
“And if anybody makes those sorts of reports to us, we take those very seriously.” He added that the website has a policy of banning the sexualization of minors.Īccording to NCOSE, Reddit uses volunteer content moderators instead of investing in technology widely used by other tech companies to identify and block sexually exploitative material. “e have rules on Reddit - no involuntary sexualization,” he assured.
Huffman said in the interview that Reddit wants “people to be safe.” “Ironically, despite the CEO’s acknowledgment that much of pornography is exploitative, he hasn’t made any public effort to stem the harmful and abusive content on its site,” Nealon adds. Nealon says Reddit, which doubled in value from $3 billion in 2019 to $6 billion in 2020, must find a way to better protect its underage users “from stumbling onto this explicit or even illegal content.” And we are perfectly supportive of that.” And these are people sharing stories of themselves, pictures of themselves. “But there’s another aspect that’s empowering. And that’s not the content that we want on Reddit,” Huffman said in the interview. Huffman claims Reddit doesn’t want to promote or feature exploitative pornography. “This should be standard operating procedure for any technology company, let alone one that allows pornography.” “If Reddit insists on allowing pornography, it must verify the identity of the persons who upload these images or videos, along with the consent of anyone in pornographic images or videos,” NCOSE Director of Corporate and Strategic Initiatives, Lina Nealon contends. The group adds that many subreddits also “normalize and even host child sexual abuse material.” NCOSE argued in a statement that its researchers and other investigative reports have found “countless” forums dedicated to specific topics on Reddit that normalize and depict incest, “non-consensually recorded and/or shared images, pornography … and prostitution promotion.” Reddit was included on the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s 2021 Dirty Dozen List of mainstream contributors to sexual exploitation for being a “hub of exploitation.” “There are difficult decisions to make in this sphere, but we think they’re worth making, as opposed to saying, you know, ‘No sex at all,’ for example,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a recent interview with Axios.Īsked if hosting pornographic content on Reddit would ever change, Huffman responded, “Sex is universal, and like many topics on Reddit, sex is one of those topics that’s often not well-served online or offline.” ( | AFP via Getty Images/ Oliver DoulieryĪlthough anti-pornography advocates have accused Reddit of normalizing and sharing incest and non-consensually recorded images, the online platform’s CEO Steve Huffman says he will take the “difficult decision” of allowing pornography because “sex is universal.” This photo illustration shows the logo of Reddit on a mobile phone in Arlington, Virginia on January 29, 2021.
0 kommentar(er)
