Trying To Stop Child Abuse

The amount of child pornography shown on the internet is shocking, and I feel that this concerns everyone who is out there with children. 

I assumed that this kind of thing was only on sick “pay to view” sites online however, this is sadly not the case. I was recently advised by a chid safety professional that a Google search using a few key “words” or initials brings up a whole host of stuff which really revolts me as a parent. 

You can report these pages online (https://www.kaspersky.co.uk/resource-center/preemptive-safety/how-to-report-a-website) however that really doesn’t deal with the problem. With Russian servers and people ready to host these pages, they just pop up again and again and again, and it’s that which concerns me. 

Should it be down to people like us who will report things rather than pass them or should it be down to internet companies. Google, for example, to make sure that certain terms are not searchable? . Should Google or other search engines have people who would be able to find and report these pages in an official capacity? I suppose they could employ safety checking staff but eventually they would be swamped with the sheet volume of filth appearing daily.

There is no easy answer or quick fix for this kind of thing……especially when it’s not clear who posts the images online especially as often the perpetrators are in a different country which means there is no way to enforce action.

I do feel that it is OUR collective responsibility to ensure that pages are reported if and when they are encountered (Many of these sites can be stumbled upon accidentally with innocuous search terms they are so prevalent) we are seen to be actively reporting rather than scrolling on by. The more difficult we make it for these child abusing perverts, the less likely they are to want to keep posting obscene material online. 

There is another aspect to this which is the protection of the children themselves. We are aware that there are always going to be people out there who do things to children but by making it more difficult for people to access the material or removing certain platforms themselves, it would reduce the number of people who harm children in the name of exploitation and profit.

If anyone has any ideas about how us as a group can work to stop this, we would welcome you sending an email to support@resistinghate.org. We will continue to work to make the internet a safer place, but we cannot do it alone. The more that people help, the better the internet will be.