Breitbart was just the start. Brands are funding child porn too.
Three years into the fight against white nationalism, I often find myself numb to the scale of the effort we’ve taken on at Sleeping Giants. When we made international headlines for getting the KKK kicked off PayPal, I couldn’t understand what the big deal was. There are many more hate groups out there I’ve flagged up that are just as bad, if not worse.
Then, at the end of last month, the NYT dropped a bombshell story that woke me the fuck up.
The investigation, titled “Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?” revealed that tech companies reported a record 45 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse last year. 45 million files. Each and every one is evidence of horrific crime against infants as young as 3 months old.
It’s not just a small tight-knit network of thugs and criminals. It’s a global cottage industry freely operating on the dark web. Members who wish to consume this material must also become “producers” to retain their membership. The dark web is where they swap, trade and sell.
Of course, the first thing I wanted to know was: Where’s the money coming from and where is it going? I did some digging and I have extremely bad news for you.
If you thought funding white nationalist rag Breitbart was bad, pick your jaw up off the floor: Child porn is traded on the dark web, but the money flows directly from brand advertising budgets. Your ads are paying for child porn.
No one is watching the bad guys
Wait, how could you possibly be funding child porn? Isn’t there brand safety tech to make sure that doesn’t happen? Yes. The same brand safety tech that kept your ads running on Breitbart.com until a band of unpaid volunteers came along to inform you on Twitter.
Your ads are funding white nationalism without your knowledge. They are funding global child porn too. Suspend your disbelief, as I have, that the worst things could possibly be true. They are.
“Using a variety of sophisticated techniques to avoid detection, offenders are exploiting online advertising networks to monetise their distribution of child sexual abuse material,” Chief executive Susie Hargreaves, Internet Watch Foundation.
The Internet Watch Foundation was tasked by the UK government last year to identify the scale of advertising on online child abuse.
But there are estimates out there already that give us an idea of the damage being done. The Digital Citizen’s Alliance found in 2014 that digital criminals funneled approximately $227 million in annual ad revenue towards “piracy, porn, and hate sites.”
Five years later, the sheer volume of child porn being uploaded to the internet has exploded — and hundreds of millions of dollars are unaccounted for. Where do you think that money is going?
Ad tech expert Dr.Augustine Fou - who meticulously tracks global ad fraud - tells me that adtech companies are simply not able to keep up: “Brand safety detection tech is limited and bad guys are actively tricking the detection, so ads are reported as ‘brand safe’ when they are actually not. There’s a direct parallel in ad fraud - ads are marked as ‘valid’ but that doesn’t mean they were shown to a human.”
And that means it’s not a question of “if”, but “how much” you’ve money put towards child porn.
From Nazis to child porn
“Do you know where your ads are going?” is the name of the drum we’ve been banging on since November 2016. I am crushed to learn that white nationalism and racism was just the tip of the iceberg.
I am angry to learn that brands have been duped into funding something even worse and unspeakably evil. I’m furious to know that anyone could see this as the cost of doing business in the digital age.
I’m coming to terms with how much bigger, more fraudulent and criminally opaque the adtech industry really is. This can't go on.
In the coming weeks, I will continue digging into the adtech industry and continue sharing what I learn.
If you'd like to keep up, follow me here or on Twitter.