Washington, DC (January 12, 2021) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) called on Google and Amazon to eradicate violence and sexually-exploitative content on their platforms and in their products, in keeping with their recent decisions to remove social media platform, Parler, for hosting content deemed to incite violence.
Both Google and Amazon are on NCOSE’s 2020 Dirty Dozen List for being mainstream contributors to sexual exploitation. Likewise, NCOSE had recently urged Parler executives to make significant changes to help eliminate sex trafficking/prostitution and hardcore pornography which also run rampant on the social media platform.
“Just as we have urged Parler to eliminate hardcore pornography and ads for prostitution, we call on Google and Amazon to equally apply their policies to their own sites and products by removing harmful violent and pornographic material,” said Dawn Hawkins, senior vice president and executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
“After years of our outreach to Google, the company has made only incremental attempts to proactively address serious digital harms flourishing on YouTube, Google Chromebooks, and Google Images. Google has long refused to institute basic safety features into Google Chromebooks for K12 schools that would protect young children from online grooming, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence.
“Amazon S3 and Amazon Web Services are host to thousands of hardcore violent pornography and prostitution websites.
“Additionally, Amazon Web Services works with Twitter, which has come under fire for hosting cyber-based sexual harassment, revenge pornography, and even child sexual abuse material on its platform.
“If Google and Amazon claim to have standards to protect their users and customers from harm, then we call on them to fully rid their businesses of violent and sexually-exploitative content and products immediately,” Hawkins added.
NCOSE will reveal 2021’s Dirty Dozen List on February 23, 2021, at 11:00 am EST online at www.DirtyDozenList.com.
About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography.
