Twitter Hails ‘Seamless’ Blocking of Child Abuse Content as Elon Musk Faces Increased EU Scrutiny
Social media giant Twitter has announced the successful deployment of a new system aimed at preventing the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its platform. Developed in partnership with non-profit organization Thorn, the AI-powered solution, called Safer, proactively detects, deletes, and reports text-based material containing child sexual exploitation.
In a beta test of the technology, Twitter participated in testing Thorn’s Safer solution, which seamlessly integrated into the platform’s existing detection mechanisms. The goal of this partnership is to expand Twitter’s capabilities in combating high-harm content that puts children at imminent risk. The initiative builds upon Twitter’s relentless efforts to combat child sexual exploitation online.
Thorn, founded in 2022 by actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, focuses on developing tools and resources to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation. Recently, Thorn and non-profit organization All Tech is Human issued a pledge that was signed by Google, Meta, and OpenAI, aiming to enforce guardrails around their AI models.
The beta testing of Thorn’s Safer AI model proved to be a valuable learning experience, demonstrating how machine learning and AI can have a real-life impact in combating child sexual abuse at scale. The model comprises a language model trained on child safety-related texts and a classification system that generates multi-label predictions for text sequences.
While the other social media platforms participating in the beta test were not disclosed, Thorn’s VP of data science, Rebecca Portnoff, mentioned that the response from other companies has been positive. Partners have found the model useful for identifying harmful child sexual abuse activity, prioritizing reported messages, and supporting investigations of known perpetrators.
The deployment of the Safer solution comes as Twitter faces increased scrutiny from the European Union (EU), which has demanded an explanation regarding reports of reduced content moderation resources. In its latest transparency report submitted to EU regulators, Twitter revealed that Elon Musk’s cost-cutting measures have led to a 20% reduction in the size of the content moderation team since October 2023, alongside a decrease in languages monitored.
The EU has initiated formal proceedings against Twitter, citing concerns over numerous areas, including risk management, content moderation, “dark patterns,” and data access for researchers. The commission has requested that Twitter provide the requested information by May 17 and address additional questions by May 27.
As the fight against child sexual exploitation intensifies, Twitter’s collaboration with Thorn and the successful deployment of the Safer solution demonstrate the platform’s commitment to creating a safer online environment for users.