Putting the Count Back Into Accountability: An Analysis of Transparency Data About the Sexual Exploitation of Minors

Abstract

Alarmist and sensationalist statements about the "explosion" of online child sexual exploitation or CSE dominate much of the public discourse about the topic. Based on a new dataset collecting the transparency disclosures for 16 US-based internet platforms and the national clearinghouse collecting legally mandated reports about CSE, this study seeks answers to two research questions: First, what does the data tell us about the growth of online CSE? Second, how reliable and trustworthy is that data? To answer the two questions, this study proceeds in three parts. First, we leverage a critical literature review to synthesize a granular model for CSE reporting. Second, we analyze the growth in CSE reports over the last 25 years and correlate it with the growth of social media user accounts. Third, we use two comparative audits to assess the quality of transparency data. Critical findings include: First, US law increasingly threatens the very population it claims to protect, i.e., children and adolescents. Second, the rapid growth of CSE report over the last decade is linear and largely driven by an equivalent growth in social media user accounts. Third, the Covid-19 pandemic had no statistically relevant impact on report volume. Fourth, while half of surveyed organizations release meaningful and reasonably accurate transparency data, the other half either fail to make disclosures or release data with severe quality issues.