Around when Elon Musk first bought Twitter, in an attempt to stop the spread of CSEM on the platform he banned the ‘loli’ and ‘lolicon’ tags on the platform. However, this hasn’t changed anything with the site’s execution to stop CSEM from being shared.
Once again, when Elon first bought Twitter, he tweeted in late November that “removing child exploitation is priority #1”showing that he was aware of Twitter’s issues with CSEM distribution, Twitter 2.0 will be different the site promised, while yes, CSEM distribution is common on any site, but with because of how Twitter rides on the title of being a free speech site CSEM is spread more often and moderated less. In an attempt to moderate the spread, Elon Musk banned the Loli and Lolicon hashtags on Twitter, when trying to visit these you get an error message, and the content of the tags isn’t displayed. However, a quick investigation shows that nothing has changed as CSEM still flourishes on the site . You would assume that reporting the content would have it removed, but Twitter has proven time and time again that reporting has a low chance of actually getting the content removed as displayed by the case of “Doe V. Twitter”. When John Doe was thirteen a sex trafficker posed and pretended to be a sixteen-year-old girl and groomed John and his friend into sending them explicit photos and videos of themselves, later on, these videos and photos were found on Twitter with over 167,000 views and was retweeted over 200,000 times. John and his mother had reported the content to Twitter along with showing identification that John was a minor, however, Twitter responded with “We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time.” . The case shows just how horribly Twitter handles genuine reports to CSEM.
While Elon had left the statement that removing child exploitation is priority #1 Elon has made multiple changes that have left skepticism about where his priorities lie with experts even saying that since Elon’s purchase of Twitter, the distribution of CSEM had gotten worse.
Musk has shown that his priorities to handle CSEM have been questioned as he has now cut the team that handles investigations of CSEM on the platform to almost half its size from before he bought it along with stopping work with Thorn, a tool made by an anti-exploitation organization. Elon has not paid the organization since he has taken over, this could be in his attempts to cut costs.
And Twitter’s relationship with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has been rocky as people who work there claim.
Now was Twitter’s ban of loli tags necessary? I don’t really think so, even if the tags were still up nothing would change. With twitter being a ‘free speech’ platform allowing NSFW I can understand how it may be difficult to regulate CSEM however Elon needs to keep his word and show that he truly does intend to remove CSEM from the platform, we can only hope that Elon won’t try a Tumblr route and ban NSFW all together.