Last year, the vast majority of online child exploitation reports were found on Facebook, according to new data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline. The study identified over 20.3 million reported incidents related to child pornography or trafficking (classified as “child sexual abuse material”) on the social media site. By contrast, Google cited 546,704 incidents, Twitter had 65,062, Snapchat reported 144,095, and TikTok found 22,692. Facebook accounted for nearly 95 percent of the 21.7 million reports across all platforms.
Notably, MindGeek—the Canada-based parent company of porn websites like Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn—reported far fewer than Facebook: 13,229. Last year was the first year MindGeek participated in the study. Their involvement coincided with a year-long campaign called #Traffickinghub, which aimed to shut down their subsidiary, Pornhub, for its alleged role in perpetuating underage human trafficking. The campaign, which began in February of 2020, presented itself as a “a non-religious, non-partisan effort.” But it was organized by Exodus Cry, a fringe Evangelical group which The Daily Beast has covered extensively, that has spent years lobbying to abolish the entire commercial sex industry.
The campaign was buoyed in part by an increased interest in eliminating child sex trafficking that gained momentum over the summer under the hashtag #SaveTheChildren. Born out of an independent fundraising effort for the century-old nonprofit of the same name, the movement was quickly co-opted by QAnon adherents and conspiracy theorists, boosting baseless claims about a global cabal of elite pedophiles that includes everyone from Tom Hanks to Chrissy Teigen.
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