Broken Promises: Sexual Exploitation

of Children on Facebook

 

 

,i

Facebook says it doesn’t tolerate child exploitation on its platform. But federal criminal
cases show pedophiles have inundated the social network for years.
Facebook has been widely used by predators to sexually abuse children, according to a new
analysis by the Tech Transparency Project, which found hundreds of U.S. cases in which
suspected pedophiles used the social network to groom minors and trade images of their sexual
abuse.
Following repeated pleas from abuse survivors and their parents, the company has promised to
prevent its platform from being used by criminals who target children. “Child exploitation is one
of the most serious threats that we focus on,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers in
October 2019. “We build sophisticated systems to find this behavior.”1
However, the review showed that Facebook’s systems are failing to eliminate such abuse.
Using a customized code, TTP scanned the text of announcements on the Justice Department’s
U.S. Attorneys website and collected any that mentioned Facebook. Analysts then identified 366
individual criminal cases involving alleged predators who used the social network for child
exploitation, including distributing sexual abuse images, recruiting children and sex trafficking.
In the vast majority of these cases, Facebook didn’t provide the initial tip-off to authorities.
Instead, officials said they relied on information from the public, leads from other investigations
or sting operations to identify suspects.
The cases detailed by the Justice Department took place across the country. They include a
Kentucky man accused of sending thousands of messages to multiple children through
Facebook; a Rhode Island man who allegedly posed as a teenage girl to lure boys into
livestreaming sexual activity on Facebook Messenger; and a convicted Missouri sex offender
who allegedly used Facebook Messenger to communicate with a 13-year-old girl.2
Among the top findings from TTP’s analysis, which examined Justice Department press
releases from January 2013 to December 2019:
•

The review identified 366 federal criminal cases over seven years that featured suspects
using Facebook for child exploitation.

•

It also found such cases are becoming more frequent, from as many as 10 per quarter in
2013 to as many as 23 per quarter in 2019. (During that same period, the number of
Facebook users also grew significantly.)

1

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2019-10-23/zuckerberg-in-heated-exchange-says-facebook-working-tocombat-sex-trafficking-video
2
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdky/pr/calloway-county-kentucky-man-charged-multiple-counts-sexual-exploitationchildren
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ri/pr/cranston-man-facing-10-years-life-prison-enticing-minors-online
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/fulton-sex-offender-pleads-guilty-transporting-13-year-old-victim-missouri-sex

2

 •

Only 9% of the cases were initiated because Facebook or the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children (which receives cyber tips from Facebook) reported them
to authorities, raising questions about the effectiveness of Facebook’s monitoring of
criminal activity targeting children.

•

The number of cases in which Facebook reported child exploitation began to increase
following passage of the FOSTA-SESTA law, which for the first time made the company
liable to civil penalties for sex trafficking on its platform. This suggests Facebook may
have become more proactive due to the potential for litigation, despite its initial
opposition to the law.

The Justice Department press releases describe notable cases that have resulted in federal
criminal charges or prosecutions; they do not cover all federal investigations or capture
violations of state law. The cases reviewed represent the tip of the iceberg of a far larger
problem that remains unsolved by Facebook in the U.S. and around the world.

Reported by Facebook/NCMEC
Not Reported by Facebook/NCMEC

Federal criminal cases across the country have shown suspected pedophiles targeting or abusing children on
Facebook. Facebook reported the activity to authorities in less than 10 percent of the cases.

A PERSISTENT PROBLEM
Facebook’s Community Standards ban “content that sexually exploits or endangers children,”
and the company has said it makes extensive use of photo-matching technology to identify and
prevent sharing of such images.3

3

https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/child_nudity_sexual_exploitation
https://about.fb.com/news/2018/10/fighting-child-exploitation/

3

 “Facebook has been working on this issue for a really long time, because unfortunately, since
the inception of the internet, people have been trying to exploit children,” Antigone Davis, the
company’s global head of safety, said in a 2018 video.4
The social network has worked for years with the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children (NCMEC), a federally funded non-profit organization that tracks child sexual abuse
images and shares them with law enforcement.5 Facebook has been among the most active
tech companies in reporting abusive images to NCMEC, sending nearly 60 million photos and
videos to the organization last year, according to The New York Times.6
But blocking images of abuse is only part of the problem. For years, Facebook’s platform has
been used to exploit children in a variety of ways, including grooming or recruiting children for
sexual abuse.
Media reports over the years have highlighted major deficiencies in Facebook’s efforts to
combat child exploitation—and the company has often resisted working with activists and
journalists who’ve identified pedophilic material on the platform.
Mexican human rights activist Lydia Cacho and technology researcher Marcelino Madrigal were
part of a team that identified more than 1,400 profiles of alleged child predators on Facebook.
Madrigal said in 2011 that the profiles were reported to the company but that many of them
reappeared after being taken down.7 After the team met with Facebook, the social network
deactivated the accounts of half of the researchers, including Cacho, who were tracking the
suspected pedophiles, Madrigal said.8
Cacho criticized Facebook later that year over the disappearance of her profile and encouraged
pressure on Facebook to deal with child abusers. “We are seeing thousands of children—babies
from 2 and 3 months old to girls from 7 to 10 years old—that are being sold, and having pictures
taken by guys, predators, on Facebook,” she told an audience in New York.9 A Facebook
spokesman didn’t address the status of Cacho’s profile but said the company doesn’t disable
accounts “simply because people are discussing controversial topics.”10
In October 2015, Facebook entered a high-profile partnership with New York’s then-attorney
general, Eric Schneiderman, on efforts to combat child exploitation online.11 Schneiderman’s
office said it would work with Facebook to “develop algorithms that will identify evidence of
4

https://www.facebook.com/facebookapp/videos/409069096292549/
http://www.missingkids.com/supportus/partners
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-safety/meet-the-safety-team/248332788520844/
6
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/us/online-child-sexual-abuse.html
7
https://www.mmadrigal.com/la-historia-no-contada-sobre-la-lucha-contra-la-pornografa-infantil-y-los-pederastas-enfacebook/
8
https://www.mmadrigal.com/la-historia-no-contada-sobre-la-lucha-contra-la-pornografa-infantil-y-los-pederastas-enfacebook/
9
https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-takes-heat-from-activist-lydia-cacho-ribeiro
10
https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-takes-heat-from-activist-lydia-cacho-ribeiro
11
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-and-facebook-announce-new-partnership-combat-online-sextrafficking
5

4

 trafficking” in online advertisements as well as “missing children who appear in advertisements
for commercial sex.”12
But Facebook soon faced more evidence of failings in its technology-driven approach.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) issued a report in February 2016 on Facebook
groups where pedophiles openly swapped photos and videos of children. BBC journalists
created an alias profile, joined the groups and reported on the prevalence of suggestive and
stolen images of children accompanied by obscene comments. In total they reported 20 images
to Facebook. The company removed just four images and users took down others, leaving half
of them up, according to the report.13
A year later, the BBC sought to test Facebook’s claims that it had enhanced its monitoring of
such content. The team reported 100 suggestive and stolen child images to Facebook using the
platform’s “report” button—and found that only 18 of the 100 images were removed.14 The BBC
also reported the profiles of five convicted pedophiles to Facebook, none of which were taken
down.15 Facebook’s policies state that convicted sex offenders are not allowed on the platform,
and the company encourages users to report them when found.16
When the BBC requested an interview for the follow-up report, Facebook told the reporters that
its director of policy, Simon Milner, would agree to an interview on the condition that the media
outlet send them examples of the reported content that remained on the platform. When the
BBC complied, Facebook reported the journalists to the child exploitation unit of Britain’s
National Crime Agency, claiming it was following the “industry’s standard practice.”17

DOJ DATA SHOW A GROWING PROBLEM
The Justice Department has spent decades monitoring child exploitation and prosecuting
pedophiles. The DOJ’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces, created in 1998, have
helped to train over 500,000 law enforcement officers and conducted tens of thousands of
investigations, according to a fact sheet.18 Since 2006, the Justice Department has run an
initiative called Project Safe Childhood, which aims to “better locate, apprehend and prosecute
individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.”19

12

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-and-facebook-announce-new-partnership-combat-online-sextrafficking
13
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35521068
14
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39187929
https://www.facebook.com/help/189165674568397?helpref=search
15
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39187929
16
https://www.facebook.com/help/210081519032737?helpref=uf_permalink
17
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39187929
https://fortune.com/2017/03/07/facebook-child-pornography/
18
https://www.justice.gov/psc/project-safe-childhood-fact-sheet#internet
19
https://www.justice.gov/psc

5

 In 2016, a DOJ working group on child exploitation, citing the results of a survey of over 1,000
investigators across federal, state and local government, said Facebook was one of the “most
commonly mentioned platforms … being used by offenders to contact children for sexual
purposes.”20
Tech Transparency Project’s analysis helps fill out that picture, through a deep dive into
information available on DOJ’s website.
TTP started by reviewing all Justice Department Offices of the United States Attorneys press
releases on federal criminal cases from January 2013 through December 2019. It identified
cases in which suspects used Facebook for alleged criminal activity, ranging from child
exploitation to terrorism to fraud.
Within those cases, which sometimes involved multiple defendants, there were 658 examples of
suspects using Facebook. More than half of those instances involved child exploitation, a sign of
how prevalent such activity is on the social network.

Data source: DOJ press releases

20

https://www.justice.gov/psc/file/842411/download

6

 Data source: DOJ press releases

Drilling down into the 385 examples of suspects using Facebook for child exploitation, TTP
found that 49% involved creating, distributing or obtaining child sexual abuse images, and
another 41% involved communicating with, grooming or recruiting children for sexual abuse.
All of the examples of suspects using Facebook for child exploitation fell into 366 cases (which
sometimes covered multiple defendants). The Justice Department’s press releases on those
cases included information on how the investigation was initiated. The majority of the cases
(91%) were initiated by tips from the public, undercover operations or information obtained in
ongoing investigations. The remaining 9% state that investigations were the result of cyber tips
from Facebook or NCMEC.

7

 Data source: DOJ press releases

Many of the Facebook cases identified in the DOJ press releases involved the use of Facebook
messaging. Examples range from a man in Hartford, Connecticut, who used Facebook
Messenger to send prostitution clients to a 16-year-old girl to a man in Jacksonville, Florida,
who sent images of his genitalia to a 9-year-old in messages on Facebook. Another man from
Cushing, Oklahoma, received sexually explicit images of a 13-year-old girl and 14-year-old girl
through private Facebook messages.21
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last year he intends to apply end-to-end
encryption to Messenger and integrate it with his company’s other messaging services,
WhatsApp and Instagram, as part of a new “privacy-focused vision.”22 Such encryption is
designed to prevent all but the participants from viewing the messages. Those plans have
sparked tension with U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who has warned it will severely hinder

21

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/hartford-man-guilty-sex-trafficking-minors-child-pornography-offenses
https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/jacksonville-man-sentenced-15-years-federal-prison-using-facebook-solicit-child
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdok/pr/cushing-man-sentenced-135-months-prison-obtaining-child-pornographyfacebook-and-then
22
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-focused-vision-for-socialnetworking/10156700570096634/

8

 investigations of child predators and terrorists.23 Messenger reportedly accounted for over 80%
of all child abuse image reports Facebook made to NCMEC last year.24
Facebook has rejected Barr’s arguments against encryption, writing to the attorney general in
December, “The ‘backdoor’ access you are demanding for law enforcement would be a gift to
criminals, hackers and repressive regimes, creating a way for them to enter our systems and
leaving every person on our platforms more vulnerable to real-life harm.”25

THE IMMUNITY ISSUE
Facebook and other tech platforms have enjoyed broad immunity from civil litigation for thirdparty content under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA 230).
That immunity was threatened in 2017 by two federal bills: A House bill, the Allow States and
Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, known as FOSTA, and a Senate bill, the Stop
Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, known as SESTA (together, FOSTA-SESTA). Both sought to
create an exception to the immunity granted by CDA 230 for content that facilitates sex
trafficking.26
Facebook ramped up its Washington influence operation in an effort to kill the legislation,
spending $11.5 million on lobbying in 2017, nearly $3 million more than the previous year.27 But
as the legislation made its way through Congress with broad bipartisan support, Facebook
eventually dropped its opposition, and the final bill passed in March 2018, with President Donald
Trump signing the measure in April. Under the new law, Facebook now can be held liable for
knowingly facilitating sex trafficking or sexual exploitation of children on its platform.28
TTP’s analysis of the DOJ press releases found a marked decrease in child exploitation cases
involving Facebook starting in the second quarter of 2017. That trend coincided with the
congressional debate over FOSTA, which was introduced in the House in April of that year.29
The frequency of such cases dropped even further starting in the fourth quarter of 2017.

23

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1207081/download
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/us/online-child-sexual-abuse.html
25
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/technology/whatsapp-barr-encryption.html
26
https://www.axios.com/sex-trafficking-bill-hits-a-nerve-in-silicon-valley-1513305065-c08f7f8e-335c-4a11-b470b990beeb785b.html
27
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000033563&year=2017
28
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00057
29
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1865
24

9

 Data source: DOJ press releases

After the bill’s final passage, however, the press releases show child exploitation cases
involving Facebook began to increase, as did Facebook and NCMEC’s reporting of such activity
to authorities.
In the five years before the passage of FOSTA-SESTA, Facebook and NCMEC averaged less
than one cyber tip per quarter, according to the TTP analysis. Since the bill was passed in
March 2018, they have averaged more than three reports per quarter. In total, they reported
more cases in the nearly two years since FOSTA-SESTA than they did in the prior five years
combined.
The trend line suggests the threat of legal liability under FOSTA-SESTA may be motivating
Facebook to increase tips to authorities. But even with the upswing, the number of Facebook
tips detailed in the DOJ press releases remains relatively low, and they’re limited to child sexual
abuse images.

10

 Data source: DOJ press releases

CHILD ABUSE IMAGES GO VIRAL
In February 2018, one month before the passage of FOSTA-SESTA, child sexual abuse images
were still appearing on the platform regularly. One video showing a young girl forced to perform
sex acts not only remained active but went viral as it was shared by outraged users who
marveled at the video’s continued existence on the platform.30 The video continued to circulate
on Facebook around the globe for a week after the suspect was arrested.31
Facebook said it had zero tolerance for such images, including those shared in protest. The
company also noted, as it had previously, that it uses PhotoDNA technology to scan every
uploaded image for child exploitation.32
Despite that assurance from Facebook, pedophilic images continue to circulate for years on the
platform. For example, one photo of a girl tied to a tree while an adult man lurks behind her,
which was flagged by researchers as far back as 2011, can still be found on the site today,
nearly a decade later.33

30

https://www.wbrc.com/story/37422261/facebook-releases-statement-about-circulating-child-pornography-post/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/02/06/child-porn-went-viral-on-facebook-and-policesay-its-creator-has-been-charged/
32
https://www.wbrc.com/story/37422261/facebook-releases-statement-about-circulating-child-pornography-post/
33
http://facebookwatcher.blogspot.com/2011/03/max-and-gerd.html
https://www.facebook.com/Sweating-like-a-Pedo-at-a-Playground-259115872275/
31

11

 (Left) An active Facebook page with disturbing imagery says it’s for “all those sweaters,” a reference to
pedophiles. (Right) The same image was identified in a profile as far back as March 2011.

Weeks after the viral video of child exploitation, Facebook ran a survey to some users seeking
input on policies the company was developing. One question asked users about pedophile
grooming behavior and whether or not it should be “allowed” for an adult man to ask a 14-yearold girl to send him sexually explicit pictures.34
Facebook’s vice president of product, Guy Rosen, later called the survey question a mistake but
did not indicate in his comments how such a
question has been approved for the survey in
the first place.
“We run surveys to understand how the
community thinks about how we set policies,”
Rosen said in a statement. “But this kind of
activity is and will always be completely
unacceptable on FB. We regularly work with
authorities if identified. It shouldn’t have been
part of this survey. That was a mistake.”35
FOSTA-SESTA was signed into law one
month later.36 On October 1, 2018, Facebook
was sued under the new law. The suit was
brought by an alleged victim who said that at
age 15 she was targeted and groomed by a

A 2018 Facebook survey asked whether or not it should
be “allowed” for 14-year-olds to share sexually explicit
pictures with adult men through Messenger.

34

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/facebook-men-children-sexual-images
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/facebook-men-children-sexual-images
36
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1865/actions
35

12

 sex trafficker using Facebook. The lawsuit accused the company of not doing enough to
address sex trafficking on its platform.37
Facebook’s response in a written statement followed a now-familiar formula: noting that such
content is “not allowed on Facebook” and putting the onus on users to report material through
the platform.38 That same month, Facebook released an update on “new technology” to fight
child exploitation.39
This week, members of Congress and the Justice Department are expected to introduce new
measures to hold tech companies like Facebook accountable for child exploitation that happens
on their platforms. In response to the legislative action, a Facebook spokesman said, “We share
the … sponsors’ commitment to child safety and have made keeping children safe online a top
priority by developing and deploying technology to thwart the sharing of child abuse material.” 40

37

https://www.apnews.com/600b3b75e3954cd9858435c494ccb963
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sex-trafficking-facebook-lawsuit/facebook-responding-to-lawsuit-says-sextrafficking-banned-on-site-idUSKCN1ME038
39
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/fighting-child-exploitation/
40
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/03/section-230-justice-department-congress/
38

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 APPENDIX
A note on methodology
We collected data for the analysis by writing custom Python code to pull every press release
mentioning Facebook from the news section of the Justice Department’s Offices of the United
States Attorneys website, a page that is updated daily.41 This process yielded 1,387 press
releases mentioning Facebook from January 2013 through December 2019. Analysts then
manually reviewed the raw data to eliminate releases that did not address crimes and instead
referenced speeches by U.S. attorneys or the DOJ’s online awareness efforts. We also filtered
out duplicate releases and individual case updates.
The remaining data left 841 cases involving Facebook. Within those cases, 638 featured
criminal suspects using Facebook as a means to commit a crime. Refining the batch further,
366 of those cases pertained to child exploitation.
We then geolocated each of those 366 cases using information provided in the press releases
and presented the results in the interactive map that accompanies this report. Due to limitations
in the visualization tools, the map omits activity that occurred outside of the continental U.S.,
Alaska and Hawaii.
In some of the cases based on charges of child pornography, Facebook wasn’t used to transmit
such material, but was instead used to recruit a minor for the purpose of creating sexual abuse
images. In such cases, the incidents were marked as “communicating with, grooming or
recruiting a minor for sexual abuse.”

41

https://www.justice.gov/usao/pressreleases

14