Technology Coalition / News & Announcements

First Annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum

On June 15 & 16, 2021, the Technology Coalition (TC) held its first annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum and convened more than 120 attendees from 25 countries, representing the technology industry, civil society, government, and law enforcement. This seminal event marked one year since the launch of Project Protect, the TC’s five-part strategic framework for combating child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) online. 

During this dynamic two-day event, panels of cross-sector experts illuminated the unique challenges of a rapidly growing dimension of CSEA, “self generated indecent imagery featuring youth.” Participants then collaborated in robust small groups to address these challenges and produce concrete deliverables. We invite you to read a summary of this event and its outcomes below.

Attendees also reviewed the TC’s revised set of visuals representing the “self-generated” issue. These graphics (below), revamped following the TC workshop held in April, were intended to capture the problem-space and outline a sampling of roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders. The TC expects these visuals to continue to evolve as both the issue and our collective approaches to it mature.

Full Workshop Summary

Industry Events / News & Announcements - 06/29/2021

Self Generated Indecent Imagery Featuring Youth: Working Together for Maximum Impact

On April 28 & 29, 2021, the Technology Coalition assembled a multi-stakeholder group of experts to begin a collective dialogue about the growing problem of “self-generated indecent imagery featuring  youth” (“SGIIFY”). The workshop included some 50 participants from a cross-section of stakeholder groups from 12 countries, namely: representatives from victim/survivor advocacy, researchers,  governments, NGOs and hotlines, law enforcement, and tech companies. Participants convened virtually to share knowledge and explore approaches. We invite you to read the Workshop Summary below for a high-level overview of these discussions.

Following our previous workshop on “The Next Frontier of Reporting,” this is the second in a series of events convened by the Technology Coalition to facilitate multistakeholder dialogues for the purpose of increasing our collaboration on protecting children from online sexual abuse and exploitation.

On June 15 and 16, the Technology Coalition will host the first annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum (MSF), a virtual global gathering to mark the one-year anniversary of Project Protect that will further explore the topic of “self-generated indecent imagery featuring  youth” (“SGIIFY”).

Full Workshop Summary

Industry Events / News & Announcements - 05/26/2021

Discord, MEGA, Pinterest and TikTok join the Technology Coalition to fight online child sexual exploitation

Posted on: May 5, 2021

Eradicating online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) remains a major priority for technology businesses, policymakers and civil society organizations around the world. 

Our founders set up the Technology Coalition in 2006 in the belief that CSEA is a collective action problem. We can only eradicate it successfully by bringing together industry, government and civil society; collectively developing groundbreaking new technologies and funding cutting-edge research to create practical solutions; and sharing best practices to implement those solutions industry-wide—transparently and accountably.

Today, we’re delighted to announce that four more leading technology companies—Discord, MEGA, Pinterest and TikTok—have agreed to join the Technology Coalition. They join eighteen current members collaborating to develop rigorous, evidence-based approaches to tackle CSEA. With their involvement, we can scale their expertise tackling online CSEA across our membership, while also sharing the Coalition’s knowledge and experience about what works. 

Sean Litton, Executive Director of the Technology Coalition, said: “Our vision is to mobilize the entire tech industry to keep all children safe from online sexual exploitation and abuse. By bringing their strengths, expertise and unique perspectives, each new member takes us a step closer to that goal. Online child sexual exploitation is a complicated and challenging issue, and we need all hands working together to effectively address it and keep children safe. I’m delighted to work with our new members to protect vulnerable children online.”

Clint Smith, Chief Legal Officer at Discord, said: “At Discord, we’re on a mission to create space for everyone to find belonging. Since our inception we have been committed to achieving this by continuously investing in the safety of all users. Our partnership with the Tech Coalition is guided by our common belief that effectively combating online child sexual exploitation requires collaboration and collective action across the tech industry. Joining the Tech Coalition is one more investment we’re making to develop and share effective, evidence-based strategies for keeping young people safe online.”

Stephen Hall, Chief Compliance Officer at MEGA, said: “We appreciate the opportunity to join the Coalition. MEGA has always had zero tolerance to the storage and sharing of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). We bring an international perspective to the Coalition and look forward to contributing to, and learning from, the Coalition and its members.”

Sev Guardado, Head of Trust and Safety at Pinterest, said: “The Technology Coalition is driving collective industry action to prevent and eradicate online child sexual exploitation and abuse. As a positive and inspirational corner of the internet, Pinterest has a zero tolerance policy and believes these efforts require industry-wide collaboration. We’re proud to join the coalition to work with key players in tech and keep our platform safe and inspiring.”

Tracy Elizabeth, Minor Safety Policy Lead at TikTok, said: “We’re at our strongest when we work together, which is why we’re proud to join the Technology Coalition. Through this membership, we hope to deepen our evidence-based approach to intervention and contribute our unique learnings from addressing child safety and exploitation. TikTok is also joining the board of the Technology Coalition along with a number of committees that aim to advance protections for children online and off and drive greater transparency of evolving threats to child safety.”

Since the launch of Project Protect—the technology industry’s most ambitious effort to date to tackle CSEA—we’ve made significant progress towards our goal to develop consistent approaches across the technology industry:

  • We’ve partnered with Thorn, the world’s leading developer of technology to defend children from online sexual exploitation, to invest $1M in child protection technology innovation. 
  • We’ve developed a fund alongside the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children to encourage research to improve product development and policy understanding to tackle CSEA effectively. The resulting Technology Coalition Safe Online Research Fund has received over 120 applications, and grants will be awarded in the coming months.
  • We’ve been working with member organizations to tackle the problem of abuse imagery. In March 2021, we convened over 100 experts from policy, industry, civil society and law enforcement from 23 different countries to develop improvements to help prevent the dissemination of abuse imagery on members’ platforms. We’ll shortly publish a paper presenting the results of a second workshop to address the challenges of self-generated indecent imagery featuring youth. 
  • We’ve launched rigorous new membership criteria to ensure members are willing to implement technical solutions, respect international policy frameworks set up to fight CSEA, and be held accountable for their efforts.

Next month, the Technology Coalition will be hosting its first annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum to mark the one-year anniversary of Project Protect and highlight the outputs and outcomes of our workshops on CSEA imagery.

If you or your organization would like to join the Technology Coalition or find out more about our work, please contact us here.

News & Announcements - 05/05/2021

Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Imagery (CSEAI): The Next Frontier of Reporting

On 24 and 25 March 2021, the Technology Coalition hosted a two-day event to bring together over 100 policymakers, civil society, law enforcement and companies from 23 different countries to explore the next frontier of reporting Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Imagery (CSEAI), increase our understanding of current reporting structures, and jointly explore potential paths for improvement. We invite you to read the summary of this event attached below.

This is the first of a series of events convened by the Technology Coalition to facilitate multistakeholder dialogues for the purpose of increasing our collaboration on protecting children from online sexual abuse and exploitation.

On April 28 & 29, we will host the second event in this series,“Self-generated indecent imagery featuring youth: Working together for maximum impact.” This second workshop aims to explore and action this multi-faceted dimension of CSEAI.

Then, on June 15 and 16, the Technology coalition will host the first annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum (MSF), a virtual global gathering to mark the one-year anniversary of Project Protect that will highlight the outputs and outcomes of the two lead-up workshops.

Full Workshop Summary Paper

Industry Events / News & Announcements - 04/14/2021

Technology Coalition Membership Criteria and Tiers

Membership Citeria

1. Business requirements

  • Members must be technology related companies and have at least one product or service that could reasonably be affected by child sexual exploitation.
  • Members must be committed to taking appropriate steps to mitigate such abuse as evidenced by the criteria below.
  • Membership will not be open to vendor companies whose main business is providing content moderation tooling and moderation services to other companies, but who do not host or provide access to content themselves

2. Commitments

Members must have a desire to combatting online CSEA and a desire to help expand the capacity of the tech industry to combat online CSEA.

3. Published standards

Members must prohibit child sexual exploitation and abuse material in their terms of service, community guidelines, or other publicly available policies or statements.

4. Reporting

Members must be able to receive reports of and take action, as appropriate, on illegal CSEA.

5. Technical solutions

Members must commit to helping further technological approaches to mitigating online CSEA.

6. Transparency

Members must support transparency and accountability in the fight against online CSEA.

7. Relevant Frameworks

Members must have a commitment to respect for human rights and children’s rights and must take steps to familiarize themselves with relevant international policy frameworks and codes of practice relating to online CSEA.

8. Partnership with civil society

Members must commit to engaging, individually or collectively, with civil society groups, including those who represent the voices of survivors, researchers, and legal, privacy and other relevant experts.

9. Commitment to engage

Members must commit to active membership, including participation in membership and committee meetings as appropriate, identify a lead representative, and commit to the timely payment of dues.

Membership Tiers

The Technology Coalition membership is a tiered system. Different tiers offer different opportunities to get involved with the governance of the Technology Coalition, with different levels of funding required. Those tiers are summarized below.

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 10.12.21 AM

To learn more about membership or the application process, please use the ‘Contact Us’ section of this website.

News & Announcements - 12/05/2020

Copyright 2021 | The Technology Coalition

The Technology Coalition is funded by member companies and does not accept funding from any government agency or NCMEC.