X (formerly Twitter) announced the opening of a new "moderation office" in Texas with the aim of eliminating content related to child sexual abuse present on the platform.
The head of commercial operations of X, Joe Benarroch reported that the "trust and safety center of excellence" (based in Austin) will recruit 100 content moderators whose work will be eliminate child sexual content (CSE) present on the social network and will take action on other community standards violations:
X DOES NOT HAVE a child-focused line of business, but it is important that we make these investments to continue to prevent criminals from using our platform for ANY distribution or interaction with CSE content.
The company - acquired by Elon Musk in 2022 - released a publication in which it declared that it was "determined to make X inhospitable to actors seeking to exploit minors":
X has strengthened its policies and enforcement to address HIA. We are now taking action on users who distribute this content and also taking immediate action on the networks of users who interact with this horrible content.
Benarroch stressed that minors under 13 years of age cannot open accounts on X , and that young people (between 13 and 17 years old) access as users a private configuration that does not allow them to be targeted by advertisers.
"Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis"
The announcement of the office's opening comes days before a Senate hearing aimed at eradicating "online child sexual exploitation."
The hearing is called "big technology and the online child sexual exploitation crisis" and will include senior executives from Snap, Meta, Discord, TikTok and X (whose representative will be Linda Yaccarino -executive director-). According to Benarroch:
We wanted to help senators and staff understand how X is a new company and what has evolved over the past 14 months. Because when it comes to CSE in particular, before the acquisition it had been largely ignored that X had changed.
