We’ve been reporting a lot on Twitter seeming failure to apply terms of service in a fair and balanced manner.

Obviously, we see that a lot in how they go after right-leaning accounts for no real reasons while leaving what would normally be violations for left-wing accounts alone for obvious violations.

That’s harmful enough.

But one case that was just revealed in a federal suit against Twitter is pretty disturbing and a pretty egregious failure, according to the NY Post.
Sex traffickers tricked a 13 year old into providing them with sexually explicit pictures and videos including him performing sex acts. The videos then subsequently showed up on Twitter in 2019 under two accounts that shared child sex material.

The child became aware of the videos in January as did his classmates, and he became the subject of teasing, harassment, vicious bullying and led him to become suicidal.

The child and his family filed multiple complaints with Twitter asking that they remove the material which was child pornography or sexual abuse.

But Twitter ignored them for almost a month, apart from asking the child for an id.

Finally, they responded saying that the child sex/porn didn’t violate their policies, so they wouldn’t take it down. It had already accumulated over 167,000 views and 2,223 retweets.

“Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” the response reads, according to the lawsuit.

“If you believe there’s a potential copyright infringement, please start a new report. If the content is hosted on a third-party website, you’ll need to contact that website’s support team to report it. Your safety is the most important thing, and if you believe you are in danger, we encourage you to contact your local authorities.”

If child porn doesn’t violate their policies, why do they have any policies at all?

The child explained to Twitter again that he was a minor as was the other child on the video and that it was the subject of a legal criminal investigation, but Twitter still refused to take it down.

It wasn’t until law enforcement intervened on Jan. 30, 2020 that they finally took the video down.

The child and his mother have now filed a federal law suit against Twitter in California saying Twitter made money off the child porn videos and refused to take them down while they were racking up views. The suit accuses Twitter of allowing people to exchange child porn material and profits from it by including ads interspersed between tweets advertising or requesting the material.

Twitter told the NY Post that they had zero tolerance for child sex abuse and were dedicated in removing it.

But it sure doesn’t look like it in this case, especially if they had to essentially get the police to make them do it. There’s no excuse for this.