App Store Accountability Act: Addressing the Chokepoints for Online Child Exploitation
Picture this:
Your 10-year-old daughter approaches you asking to download social media. Despite her pleas, you decline, telling her she’s too young. The age limit listed on the Apple App Store for most social media apps is 13.
That still doesn’t seem old enough, but you decide you won’t even consider it until she’s at least 13 years old.
“Ask me again on your 13th birthday,”
you tell her.
A few months later, your daughter comes running down the stairs in tears. “What’s going on?” you ask.
Reluctantly, she tells you she downloaded Instagram without your permission and something bad has happened:
A strange man had messaged her, pretending to be a boy her age. The man coerced her into sending sexually explicit images and was now demanding money or he would publish these images online. Your heart sinks.
Confused your mind is racing:
The age limit is 13. How was she able to download it without my permission?
Unfortunately, this could happen to any parent because
app stores do not currently have robust methods in place for verifying the age of users who are downloading their apps.
And once they download the app, in most cases, the apps themselves do not require age verification beyond entering your birthday, which a child can easily fudge.
The App Store Accountability Act
seeks to solve this problem!
Read More
📣
ACTION: Ask Your State to Pass App Store Accountability Legislation
Take Action!
Is Decriminalizing Prostitution Good for the LGBTQ+ Community?
The push for legalizing or fully decriminalizing prostitution is sometimes disguised as a pursuit of social justice for members of the LGBTQ+ community. But in reality, it only normalizes the oppression of LGBTQ+ individuals (and all individuals) in this exploitative system.
In a new episode of the Ending Sexploitation podcast, Cristian Eduardo, a survivor leader for the anti-exploitation and LGBTQ+ rights movement, discusses the impact of prostitution on the queer community.
Eduardo cites
the ostracization of LGBTQ+ individuals
from mainstream society as
a primary factor that can lead them into a life of prostitution.
Vulnerabilities like homelessness, being victimized through hate crimes, and systemic discrimination are all factors that account for the overrepresentation of this community in prostitution.
“The more isolated a community is, that’s perfect for prostitution,”
Eduardo says.
Eduardo describes a sex trafficker’s grooming tactics like this: “‘You’re being rejected from everywhere? Let me welcome you. Let me show you that this is the path for you.’”
Read More & Watch Now
📣
ACTION: Ask Your Legislators to Pass the Survivor Model!
Cristian Eduardo advocates for the Survivor Model, a legislative approach to prostitution that criminalizes the exploiters while decriminalizing and providing support to the exploited. Join him in urging you legislators to adopt this important model!
Take Action!
NCOSE's Benjamin Bull in the
Washington Examiner:
Why Trump Supporters Should Reject Andrew Tate
Senior Vice President and Legal Counsel at NCOSE, Benjamin Bull, was recently featured in the Washington Examiner in an op-ed discussing the arrival of the Tate brothers to the United States. After some unsettling reports came about that the Trump Administration had requested that the Tates’ home confinement in Romania be lifted and they be allowed to travel to the United States, Bull writes why
Trump supporters (and everyone) should denounce the actions of the Tate brothers:
“
Based on public comments, some in Trump’s camp are Tate supporters and believe they have been unfairly treated. However, any sympathy or support for the Tates is misguided. To be sure, Andrew Tate is a major social media influencer with millions of followers online, and he endorsed Trump in the recent election. But it is a matter of public record that he is the subject of
serious criminal allegations, including human trafficking, rape, and more.
”
Read More
Thorn Report Reveals the Shocking Prevalence of “Deepfake Nudes” Among Teens
Child protection organization Thorn surveyed 1,200 young people ages 13-20 to collect data on the prevalence on AI-generated sexual images, referred to in the survey as “deepfake nudes". Below are some of the most alarming findings:
1 in 17 teens (6%) reported they had "deepfake nudes" created of them by someone else (i.e., have been the victim of
AI-generated child sexual abuse material, CSAM
).
1 in 8 teens (12%) personally knows someone who has been targeted/victimized by AI-generated CSAM
Creators of AI-generated sexual images also overwhelmingly said they created the content of females (74%).
65% of self-reported creators said they had shared their content in some capacity
Read More
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