In recent months, the platform has also experienced problems with its abuse reporting system, which allows users to notify the company when they come across child exploitation material. (Twitter offers a guide to report abusive content on your platform).
The Times used its research account to report multiple profiles claiming to sell or trade the content in December and January. Many of the accounts were still active and even appeared as recommendations to follow in the account created by the Times itself. The company said it would need more time to unravel why those recommendations were appearing.
To find the material, Twitter uses software created by an organization that fights human trafficking called Thorn. According to people familiar with the relationship, Twitter has not paid the organization since Musk took over, believed to be due to its widespread effort to cut spending. Twitter also stopped working with Thorn to improve the technology. The collaboration was beneficial to the entire industry because other companies use the same software.
Irwin declined to comment on Twitter’s business relationships with specific vendors.
Twitter’s relationship with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has also taken a hit, according to people who work there.
John Shehan, an executive at the center, said he was concerned about the “high level of turnover” on Twitter and about the company’s stance on “trust and safety and its commitment to identifying and removing child sexual abuse material.” of your platform.
Following the transition into Musk’s hands, Twitter was initially slower to react to the center’s notifications of sexually assaultive content, according to the center’s data, a significant delay for abuse survivors, who are revictimized with each new publication. Twitter, like other platforms, maintains a two-way relationship with the center. The site notifies the center (which in turn can notify the authorities) when it becomes aware of illegal content. And when the center learns of illegal content on Twitter, it alerts the site so the images and accounts can be removed.
At the end of last year, the company’s response time was more than double what it had been during the same period a year earlier with the previous owners, even though the center was sending fewer alerts. In December 2021, Twitter took an average of 1.6 days to respond to 98 reports; last December, after Musk’s arrival, it took 3.5 days to respond to 55 reports. In January, it got a lot better: It took 1.3 days to respond to 82 reports.
Source: NYT Español
