Sharing – What to do when you find CSAM or evidence of child sex trafficking online
I’m glad that Thorn is sharing a resource like this one, and I’m glad also that this line is in their instructions:
“Never share abuse content, even in an attempt to report it.”
Now, they go on to talk about the fact that sharing child sexual abuse content is a crime by itself, so if you see something like that, the very worst thing you could do is share it “to identify these people”. Sadly, I’ve seen examples of people doing exactly that, and breaking the law, but that’s rare. Much more likely is someone sharing physical or verbal abuse videos instead of reporting them to the proper channels. You may not be surprised to know that there are more than a few people who think sharing it with me is someone “reporting”, as if a blog about being a child abuse survivor is the place to go to investigate criminal activity.
Now, actually, that’s not what they are doing, they are trying to “make it go viral” to shame the people committing the violence, instead of getting the proper authorities involved.
Whatever the motivation, that’s not the appropriate thing to do. The article below walks through the steps of reporting it to the platform where you saw it, and also reporting it to the proper law enforcement agencies. Those are the places who can actually investigate this, not your friends and groups.
Please, keep this in mind, and keep this handy.
