2025 Theses Bachelor's

Combating Child Sex Trafficking Material Online: A Study of Meta’s, MindGeek’s, and Snap Inc.’s Transparency Reporting

Beckman, Emelie

The increasing spread of child sex trafficking material (CSTM) online is a violation of children’s rights. The U.S. government requires companies that own social media platforms where perpetrators distribute material to monitor their platforms to prevent the spread of CSTM. In recent years, these companies have begun publishing transparency reports detailing how they moderate this harmful content. However, researchers criticize the transparency reports for not being transparent.

This thesis concludes that two of these companies, Snapchat and Facebook, consistently fail to disclose data regarding their automatic moderation systems in these reports, the primary tool for identifying CSTM online. Although they have increased the amount of information in their reports, they have yet to include meaningful data regarding their content moderation of CSTM. Therefore, they have not increased their transparency regarding what actions they take against CSTM and have failed to protect children’s rights.