Twitter has come under fire from several companies after they found their ads and marketing campaigns running alongside tweets which solicited child pornography.
Major brands like NBC Universal, Coca-Cola and Walt Disney are just a few of over 30 advertisers that were found on the profile pages of exploitive Twitter accounts, Reuters reported.
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In new research conducted by Ghost Data, corporate advertisers’ promoted posts appeared in tweets found after searching “rape” and “teens”.
In one abhorrent example on Twitter, a promoted tweet for Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in Texas appeared alongside a tweet searching for child pornography content of “Yung girls ONLY, NO Boys”.
Another instance saw shoe and accessories brand Cole Hann advertising next to a tweet claiming to be “trading teen/child” content.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is currently wrapped up in a legal battle with the social platform, commented that the situation was “extremely concerning”.
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By GlobalDataThis seems to keep happening
Back in 2019, YouTube faced a similar advertising shilling. Several major advertisers temporarily pulled their digital advertising spending from the Alphabet-owned video platform following evidence that paedophile networks were using it to share child pornography.
In some cases, the videos were found to have been recommended to users via YouTube’s algorithm. Some even had advertisements attached to them, Financial Times reported.
Nestle, one of the world’s biggest food manufacturers, and Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, were just a couple of companies that suspended their advertising budget on the platform.
At the time, a spokesperson for the video platform stated: “Any content – including comments – that endangers minors is abhorrent and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube.
“We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling comments on tens of millions of videos that include minors.
“There’s more to be done, and we continue to work to improve and catch abuse more quickly.”
Twitter has been slow to remove explicit accounts
Ghost Data, who carried out the research on Twitter, found over 500 accounts that were openly sharing or requesting child sexual abuse material across a 20-day period.
According to the group, over 70% of the accounts were not removed by the social platform during the study this month.
Celeste Carswell, a Twitter spokesperson, said the social media platform “has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation” and claims it will be investing more resources dedicated to child safety.
This will apparently include hiring for new positions to implement solutions and write policy.
Twitter said that more needed to be done over a year ago when a team of employees concluded that more investment was needed in helping to remove child exploitation material.
In a report prepared by an internal team in February 2021, a spokesperson said: “While the amount of [child sexual exploitation content] has grown exponentially, Twitter’s investment in technologies to detect and manage the growth has not.”
GlobalData is the parent company of Verdict and its sister publications.
