From TheGatewayPundit.com Cassandra Fairbanks
Published January 21, 2021 at 11:17am
Twitter is being sued by a child pornography victim for refusing to remove images of him at 13 years old that were posted by predators who blackmailed him.
Twitter allegedly told the victim that the child pornography did not violate the platform’s terms of service.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in California on Wednesday on behalf of the now 17-year-old from Florida, who is identified only as “John Doe.”
The National File reports that when Doe was 13 through 14, he was targeted by sex traffickers posing as a 16-year-old female classmate, who blackmailed him to share nude content.
“After initially exchanging nude content, the victim was then forced to share more, otherwise the material would be shared with his ‘parents, coach, pastor,’ and others, the traffickers threatened. Doe first complied under duress, the lawsuit notes, but then managed to block the traffickers. However, at some point in 2019, the child porn was then shared to Twitter from two accounts that were known to share this material,” the National File report explains.
Doe’s lawsuit says that he reported the accounts sharing the images to Twitter no less than three times, but Twitter claimed that they had “reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation” of their policies.
The images of the very young Doe racked up over 167,000 views on the platform.
“What do you mean you don’t see a problem?” Doe replied to Twitter. “We both are minors right now and were minors at the time these videos were taken. We both were 13 years of age. We were baited, harassed, and threatened to take these videos that are now being posted without our permission. We did not authorize these videos AT ALL and they need to be taken down.”
The content was not removed until an agent from the Department of Homeland Security contacted Twitter.
“This is directly in contrast to what their automated reply message and User Agreement state they will do to protect children,” the lawsuit states.
National File reported last year that Twitter’s Terms of Service explicitly allow people to openly talk about child rape on their platform, despite claiming to have “zero tolerance towards any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation.”
“Discussions related to child sexual exploitation as a phenomenon or attraction towards minors are permitted, provided they don’t promote or glorify child sexual exploitation in any way. Artistic depictions of nude minors in a non-sexualized context or setting may be permitted in a limited number of scenarios e.g., works by internationally renowned artists that feature minors,” the platform’s Terms of Service state.
The images were not taken down until law enforcement got involved.
Second Child Sexual Abuse Survivor Joins Federal Lawsuit Against Twitter
Twitter grants more free speech rights to pedophiles and child predators than they do to Donald Trump’s supporters.
From Endsexualexploation.org:
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center (NCOSE), The Haba Law Firm, and The Matiasic Firm are suing Twitter on behalf of a second survivor of child sexual abuse who was trafficked on the social media platform.
The plaintiff, John Doe #2, joins the federal lawsuit originally filed by John Doe #1, alleging that both boys were trafficked by Twitter. The First Amended Complaint, John Doe #1 and John Doe #2 v. Twitter, Inc. was filed on April 7 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Both plaintiffs were harmed by Twitter’s distribution of material depicting their sexual abuse and trafficking, and by Twitter’s knowing refusal to remove the images of their sexual abuse (child pornography) when notified by John Doe #1 and his parents.
“Twitter has profited from the knowing distribution of child sexual abuse material depicting these two young men when they were children, and it must be held accountable. Twitter cannot sweep under the rug the fact that it both allowed child sexual abuse material on its site and refused to remove it,” said Peter Gentala, senior legal counsel for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center.