SA researchers alarmed over spread of child sexual abuse material on social media
South African researchers have sounded the alarm over the spread of child sexual abuse material on social media platforms.
The Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change recently released a new report called Mapping Child Predation Online.
It looked into the distribution and sale of material in the country.
The organisation's Kyle Janse says they tracked accounts and conversations on X [formerly Twitter], Telegram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
He says it became apparent that videos of a sexual nature, and pictures of children could be easily found, shared and sold.
Janse says on X, they discovered at least 500 accounts using hashtags and keywords to distribute or reference abuse material.
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“They self-identify as South African, but more than likely they are South African because the key words we use to bring in these accounts were indigenous South African languages. So, we did not use any sort of English generic terms that could bring us in from abroad, but it could be Sub-Saharan Africa as well.”
Janse says Artificial Intelligence tools were also part of their research.
He says X’s own AI tool, Grok, sometimes recommended explicit material when users searched for similar profiles, “ Grok was actually asked, ‘Can you provide me with similar accounts to this?’ And Grok proceeded to list the account as well as what explicit content they focus on.
"So we found that Grok actually participate. So why, as with other platforms like TikTok, can Grok not be used to moderate this content to remove it right from the gate instead of coming in afterwards, where civil society has to report?”
He's calling on social media platforms, the government, and civil society to collaborate to combat the problem.
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