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A Glossary of Organizations Tech Firms Work With on Child Online Safety

Prithvi Iyer / Jan 25, 2024

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On Wednesday, January 31st, the Senate Judiciary Committee will host a hearing featuring the CEOs of Meta, X, TikTok, Snap, and Discord regarding their efforts to protect children on their platforms.

The CEOs that will serve as witnesses- including Mark Zuckerberg, Linda Yaccarino, Shou Zi Chew, Evan Spiegel, and Jason Citron, respectively, are each likely to reference a range of partnerships and third-party organizations they work with on online safety issues for children. In fact, any inquiry into the successes and failures of tech firms to address issues such as the proliferation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), child predation, and other harms to children requires some understanding of this growing ecosystem of NGOs, associations, coalitions, academic labs, and other outside entities.

Below is a glossary of many of the key entities mentioned in the various transparency reports and public disclosures by Meta, X, TikTok, Snap, and Discord, as well as other groups that play a role in these issues. In the US, all these platforms coordinate with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Some have relationships focused on particular markets, such as the UK.

The list below is intended to provide a sense of this broader ecosystem of organizations but is not necessarily a complete picture of every relationship the platforms hold on these matters. For that, we refer you to the company disclosures. If your organization works directly with one of these tech platforms and is not listed here, get in touch.

Discord

TikTok

Meta

Snap

X (formerly known as Twitter)

Glossary of Organizations

  • Active Minds
    • Active Minds is a nonprofit organization promoting mental health, especially among young adults, via peer-to-peer dialogue and interaction.
  • Aselo
    • Aselo is an open-source cloud-based helpline that “connects people with the help they need via phone or their preferred social media channels.”
  • Boston Children's Digital Wellness Lab
    • The Digital Wellness Lab is a nonprofit research center seeking to understand and promote positive and healthy digital media experiences for young people, from birth through young adulthood. Some of their key research priorities include Artificial Intelligence, pro-social development, and Problematic Interactive Media Use (PIMU).
  • Connect Safely
    • ConnectSafely is a California-based nonprofit organization that educates people about online safety, privacy, security, and digital wellness. Its resources include evidence-based safety guides, news and commentary on tech policy issues. It also offer in-depth guides for parents, educators and policymakers concerned with child online safety.
  • Children's Advocacy Project
    • The Children’s Advocacy Project (CAP) is a team of committed agencies and individual professionals who work together to provide coordinated forensic and comprehensive services for alleged victims of child maltreatment and children who witness violence to minimize trauma to children, to break the cycle of abuse and to foster a more effective and efficient community response to child maltreatment.
  • Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (UK Govt Agency)
    • The UK CEOP Command, established under the National Crime Agency (NCA), works with child protection partners across the UK and overseas to “identify the main threats to children and coordinate activity against these threats to bring offenders to account.” It protects children from harm online and offline through NCA-led operations and in partnership with local and international agencies.
  • Child Protection Lab
    • A multistakeholder initiative that identifies, assesses and develops protocols to ensure child safety on the internet.
  • Common Sense Media
    • A non-profit organization that reviews and issues ratings for media content based on its suitability for consumption by children.
  • Cyber Angles
    • CyberAngels is organized to help educate parents and kids on keeping your students, kids, and yourself safe online.
  • Cyberbullying Research Center
    • The Cyberbullying Research Center is dedicated to providing up-to-date information about the nature, extent, causes, and consequences of cyberbullying among adolescents. The website serves as an information repository pertaining to the ways adolescents use and misuse technology. It is intended to be a resource for parents, educators, mental health professionals, law enforcement officers, counselors, and others who work with youth.
  • Enough is Enough
    • The Enough Is Enough (EIE) mission is to make the Internet Safer for Children and Families. A non-profit organization, it emerged in 1994 as the pioneering leader on the front lines of efforts to prevent the Internet-enabled exploitation of children.
  • End Violence Against Children
    • This initiative was launched in 2016 by the UN Secretary-General and functions as a platform for evidence-based advocacy against child exploitation, both online and offline.
  • Fairplay
    • Fairplay is a non-profit organization that helps children navigate online spaces and advocates for eliminating targeting advertisements for minors.
  • Family Online Safety Institute
    • FOSI is an advocacy organization highlighting the best safety messages, tools, and methods to reach parents, children, and caregivers. It also works towards educating governments, regulators, industry and media worldwide on a balanced approach to online safety.
  • HelpLinks
    • HelpLinks is a repository of resources to help individuals who are sexually attracted to children. The list is compiled and updated by the police in various countries. The links are for “help and prevention purposes only, providing those that want help with their situation – somewhere to start in their own country and language.”
  • INHOPE
    • INHOPE is a global network of hotlines and partner organizations combatting online Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The Network consists of 54 hotlines in 50 countries (as of December 2023) that provide the public with a way to anonymously report illegal content online with a focus on CSAM. Reports are reviewed by content analysts who classify the illegality of the material, which is then shared with local Law Enforcement Agencies and a notice and takedown order is sent to the relevant Hosting Provider.
  • Internet Watch Foundation
    • IWF is an independent not-for-profit organization with funding support from technology companies and the broader public. It helps “governments shape new laws, and laws that will benefit victims of child sexual abuse and give the best possible protection to children online.”
  • International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children
    • ICMEC partners with leading technology companies to “identify and develop new global solutions that protect children from sexual abuse, exploitation, and the risk of going missing.”
  • Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program (US DOJ)
    • The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program (ICAC program) helps state and local law enforcement agencies develop an effective response to technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and online crimes against children. This help includes “forensic and investigative components, training and technical assistance, victim services, and community education.”
  • MediaSmarts
    • MediaSmarts is a Canadian non-profit organization that provides digital media literacy training for Canadian schools..
  • National Association for Media Literacy Education:
    • A coalition geared towards providing tools for online safety and digital literacy.
  • National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
    • The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is a private, non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation whose mission is to “help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization. NCMEC works with families, victims, private industry, law enforcement, and the public to assist with preventing child abductions, recovering missing children, and providing services to deter and combat child sexual exploitation.”
  • National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)
    • UK-based non-profit working on child online safety via groundbreaking initiatives, like the Report Remove service, which empowers young people to have sexual images of themselves removed from the internet.
    • NSPCC also supports parents and caregivers to recognize signs of abuse and help keep children safe online.
  • National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
    • NCOSE is a US non-profit organization engaged in research, advocacy and litigation to fight online child exploitation.
  • Power of Zero
    • Power of Zero is a global initiative that brings together parents, educators, researchers, UN agencies, corporate citizens, NGOs, and philanthropic foundations to help children navigate online spaces.
  • Protect US Kids
    • The organization’s mission is to protect youth from being victimized by predators who leverage cyberspace as an international exploitation tactic. It serves as a bridge between affected communities and those organizations that can take action to help them.
  • Protect Young Eyes
    • Protect Young Eyes is an online teaching service that educates the public about online safety, parental controls, and social media use for minors.
  • Parents Together
    • ParentsTogether is a non-profit media organization geared towards providing the news families need. It covers the latest research, policies, and trends affecting young children.
  • Thorn
    • Thorn is a non-profit organization that helps build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. It houses “the first engineering and data science team focused solely on developing new technologies to combat online child sexual abuse.” It also conducts assessments for “whether new technologies can be repurposed to protect children from sexual exploitation through one of our three strategic pillars: 1) accelerating victim identification 2) equipping platforms, and 3) empowering the public.”
  • Tech Coalition
    • The Tech Coalition is an alliance of global tech companies trying to combat child sexual exploitation and online abuse. Its members work together to “drive critical technological advances and adoption of best practices for keeping children safe online.”
  • Troubled Desire
    • Troubled Desire is an initiative from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. It is an online self-management tool for people attracted to children and early adolescents. Its goal is ultimately to prevent child sexual abuse and the use of child abuse images and to “alleviate the distress experienced by those with paedophilic inclinations.”
  • UN: The Child Online Protection Initiative
    • The Child Online Protection (COP) Initiative is a multi-stakeholder network launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to promote awareness of child safety in the online world and to develop practical tools to assist governments, industry, and educators.
  • WePROTECT Global Alliance
    • WePROTECT is a coalition of stakeholders from government, civil society and the private sector working to develop policies to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse.

Authors

Prithvi Iyer
Prithvi Iyer is a Program Manager at Tech Policy Press. He completed a masters of Global Affairs from the University of Notre Dame where he also served as Assistant Director of the Peacetech and Polarization Lab. Prior to his graduate studies, he worked as a research assistant for the Observer Resea...

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