Last week, Prostasia Foundation participated in the grassroots hashtag campaign #HINA or #HateIsNotActivism, to push back against the idea that harassment of artists and authors is an acceptable way for people to respond to art and fiction that they don’t like because of its triggering or taboo content. It’s tempting for those who have a deep aversion to such content to report it as child abuse material when they encounter it online, so that it gets priority attention from the platform’s moderation team. But unless it really does depict the abuse of real children, we encourage people simply to block such content instead.

Why is important not to report art or fiction as if it was real child abuse? Two reasons. First, it places a strain on the platforms’ trust and safety teams, whose principal job is—or ought to be—protecting real human beings from harm. Reporting content that doesn’t directly place a child in harm’s way clogs up the system that real victims depend upon for their rescue.

A second reason not to report images as child abuse is that Internet platforms pass these reports on to national child abuse reporting hotlines (we wrote more about these hotlines, which are closely linked to government, in last month’s newsletter). These hotlines have far-reaching powers. They use reports submitted by the public to construct blocklists that are shared across the world, and can result in a user who shares those images being automatically flagged to investigators.

We know that some of these groups, such as NCMEC and the Canadian Center for Child Protection, are accepting reports about artwork that clearly doesn’t depict real children, either because they don’t review the reports properly, or because their national law includes art and fiction within the legal definition of child pornography. Although we don’t know the figures for those groups, it has been reported that in 2018, 2% of tips to the Irish hotline were for virtual images or even text fiction.

Reporting artwork to these groups can therefore put the poster and the artist at risk of being arrested for a child pornography offense if they live in a country where such artwork is illegal. For example, a referral from Canadian authorities led to a 17 year old girl from Costa Rica being arrested over artwork on her blog. No matter how offended you may be about such artwork, this is a disproportionately harmful response.

Discussions about child sexual abuse and minor attraction

The same caution needs to be applied to reporting text content, such as discussions of child sexual abuse and minor attraction. Frequently, users who identify as minor-attracted use social media networks to access peer and professional support. Some of these users, when first discovering these unwanted feelings, are as young as 14 years old. Yet although they are not acting on these feelings, their accounts are frequently harassed and reported for child exploitation. This can impede them from receiving the help that they need, and push them into darker corners of the Internet.

Although it isn’t appropriate to report the accounts of people who aren’t actively engaged in illegal behavior or its promotion, it’s absolutely understandable that there are many for whom posts about child abuse or minor-attraction can be triggering or hurtful. So it’s entirely appropriate for people to draw a personal boundary and to block those accounts.

Because developing a personal list of blocked accounts can be a time-consuming and error-prone process, some users get together with others to form their own communities in which they share tips about which accounts should be blocked or reported. We recently spoke to the administrator of one such popular community account, the self-styled Online Bureau of Internet Justice or OBIJ, to talk about their approach to the coordinated community reporting on Discord and Twitter. (Note that Prostasia Foundation does not endorse any actions taken by the OBIJ. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.)

Prostasia: What got you interested in policing content on Twitter, and why do you think this is necessary?

OBIJ: I guess it started with the OBIJ about a year ago. My friend had a problem with a stalker who would harass him everywhere and so the two of us, with a bunch of friends, managed to make him leave us alone. Since then we thought we were cool enough to try and help other people. We’ve had a bunch of cases ranging from serious threats, doxxing, and irl [in real life] crimes to simple trolling. Since about July/August I began focusing on Pro Contact MAPs and accounts that post illegal content. I personally don’t consider the OBIJ to be a “pedophile hunter group” especially now considering what the term means nowadays. Our reason for existence is that we are a group of guys who wanna help people who get unfair or abusive treatment online when the mods aren’t helping (which is often the case).

Prostasia: You recently made a decision not to pursue Twitter accounts of people who identify as non-offending MAPs, provided that they aren't infringing Twitter terms of service. Can you explain more about this decision?

OBIJ: Well the OBIJ is about helping people who are getting harassed and fighting people who harass others, right? Well going after random accounts that tweet nothing and spamming them with slurs sounds a bit hypocritical and many argued that it goes against our motto. While we do not support the normalization of pedophilia, we understand that MAPs did not choose to be who they are, as pedophilia develops in people like anything else and it is not curable. So while we don’t want to support pedophilia, we don’t want to attack people who were born a certain way. So we decided to chose a middle ground that felt right. We will target accounts that either break ToS, state laws, or generally harass other people.

Prostasia: How do you respond to the criticism that groups like yours are drawing attention to prohibited content, and that abusers might follow you to access such content? How can you limit this risk?

OBIJ: We are aware of such criticisms and we are trying to figure out a way to limit the risks. So far we are limiting the risks by doing the most extreme cases privately without public support, and giving the job to only trusted OBIJ Agents. But we are open to suggestions and ideas as we are thinking of other ways.

In March 2019, Twitter amended its existing child sexual exploitation policy to clarify that the policy isn’t infringed when users merely talk about the topic of child sexual exploitation, or about attraction towards minors:

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.

Initially drawing the attention of alt-right news sources in November, this policy was also the subject of criticism last week from controversial Australian criminologist Michael Salter, who claimed that Twitter’s policy was “pushed by forensic psychs who treat ‘minor attracted people’ and wanted a forum for this group to discuss their issues. Child protection and abuse prevention experts were not consulted, because we would never have endorsed this change.”

Salter’s account isn’t true, however: abuse prevention experts were consulted; it’s just that he wasn’t one of them. Many have attributed Twitter's stance to the influence of a letter signed by a group of scientific experts and human rights activists in January 2018, some of whom, with others, later came together to form Prostasia Foundation. The letter states in part:

We acknowledge that Twitter is at liberty to terminate the accounts of its users for breaching its terms of service, and we strongly agree that any Twitter users who advocate for sexual contact between adults and children would be appropriate candidates for such suspension. … [But] terminating the accounts of non-offending, anti-contact MAPs [minor-attracted persons] is likely to result in the opposite effect of that which Twitter may expect or intend. Rather than reducing the incidence of child sexual abuse, if anything, it increases the risk that some pedophiles will be unable to obtain the peer or professional support that they may need in order to avoid offending behaviour. It is also likely to increase the stigma and isolation associated with pedophilia and thereby increase the likelihood of some MAPs acting on their sexual feelings.

While we can't take responsibility for Twitter's policies, we continue to stand alongside the experts who recommended the position that Twitter has adopted. But with people who are regarded as “experts” lined up on both sides of the issue, it can be hard for the public to know what to think. Do Prostasia Foundation and Twitter have it right, or does Salter and the alt-right?

We’ve mentioned Michael Salter in our newsletter before, when noting that he opposes our proposed research into outlets for sexual interests that can’t be enacted with a consenting partner—indeed, he supports the criminalization of these outlets. Salter is also controversial for his connection with the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s; a viral conspiracy theory that resulted in many families been torn apart over false allegations of Satanic ritual sexual abuse. We also differ from Salter about the ethics of the police operating child abuse websites, to entrap perpetrators; a policy that he supports, but which we and other human rights groups say crosses a line. Where Salter stands on these issues exemplifies his overall stance towards the child sexual abuse problem: he views strong criminal enforcement as its solution.

We differ in that we view prevention of abuse as a far more important priority. No child abuse prosecution can be viewed as a success if that act of abuse could have been averted if the right prevention interventions had been taken. If preventing abuse is our priority, then open communication is essential. The stigma against the discussion of the controversial topics of child sexual abuse and minor attraction will not serve us in preventing abuse when the people who are afraid of broaching these topics include those who are in need of help, and those who are trying to help them.

Twitter’s decision to allow uncensored discussions of child sexual abuse and minor attraction—provided that they don’t amount to the promotion or glorification of abuse—was the right one. In light of how easily evidence-based policies can smeared as “pedo-apologism” by conservative groups and conspiracy theorists, it was also a brave decision. Although this means that Twitter will always contain some content that is unwanted by some, the best way for them to deal with this is not to censor or report it, but to exercise their right to block it.

As an organization that upholds the value of freedom of expression as a plank of our core mission, it pains us to have to self-censor anything that we have written. But our responsibility to ensure the safety of our team is an even more pressing concern.

For this reason we felt it necessary to remove a recent tweet about the appointment of a new volunteer, which generated comments that detracted from any meaningful discussion of the topic. Due to the hateful nature of these tweets it was uncertain what sort of unwanted action these account holders might have taken.

It shouldn’t be necessary for us to say so, but the insinuations made against anyone based on their physical appearance represent a form of “lookism,” a prejudiced belief system for which we have no tolerance. The idea that someone’s sexuality, intelligence, criminal inclinations, or other mental features can be identified by looking at the shape of their skull was the core tenet of phrenology, a racist pseudoscience that had fallen out of favor before the end of the nineteenth century.

Although body shaming and general bigotry on Twitter aren’t unusual, what is somewhat unusual and particularly despicable in this case is that the stigma that child sexual abuse prevention experts face offers so much cover to abusers, that even professionals felt safe and justified in joining the pile-on. Among those who did so were Michael Salter, Anna Slatz (who had earlier written a hit piece targeting another of our volunteers, and who is best known for publishing a Nazi manifesto), and conservative New York Times columnist Elizabeth Bruenig. (Following a complaint to her editor about her unprofessional behavior, Ms Bruenig later deleted all of her tweets in the thread.)

To shield our volunteer from further abuse, we have removed our original tweet about his appointment. Those who sent abusive replies have been blocked and, where appropriate, reported to Twitter. We have also hidden his biography from our website—though he will still be volunteering for us this year. (We also have several experts, and representatives from the Internet sector, who volunteer on our Advisory Council but have asked not to be listed there, so there is established precedent for us taking this step to protect a volunteer’s privacy.)

Let us be very clear: we have removed the tweet not because we are ashamed of it. Indeed, it is those who commented with vile abuse who should be deeply ashamed of themselves. In one of our replies to this thread, we posted a link to an article we wrote last June, when we were last beset by large numbers of Twitter trolls, which asked the question, “Who should be excluded from child protection?” As we said then, “provided that they are on board with our mission of child sexual abuse prevention… nobody should be categorically excluded.”

If someone who wishes to work with us can agree that child sexual abuse is wrong and that human rights are universal, then we don't care what they look like. We don't care what they do in their bedroom by themselves or with other consenting adults. We don't care what kind of books they like to read. We don't care what sort of drawings they like to make. And we don't think that you should care about those things, either.

The idea that protecting children from sexual abuse depends on attempting to divine what is going on in a stranger’s head and how they will act based on their appearance, gender, sexuality, or their consensual sexual or artistic interests, is this century’s version of phrenology, and it is anathema to us. It is also a perfect example of the kind of intrusive thought control that we were formed to fight against. As we stated in our 2018 annual report, Prostasia Foundation’s approach is based on the knowledge that “anybody can commit child sexual abuse—but nobody is predestined to do so.” This didn’t change in 2019, and it won’t change in 2020.