Shocking figures on child abuse online were presented to the European Parliament by Eleonora Meleti, revealing that every month 3,500 children fall victim to online harassment and manipulation. According to the MEP, there are 3.4 million videos recording these criminal acts, which makes it necessary to take immediate action at European level.
Ms Meleti pointed out that although digital platforms have the technology to detect this material, they are often slow to remove it. In fact, she stressed that every minute that the content remains online, victims suffer secondary abuse, while at the same time the circuits of trafficking such material are strengthened.
Eleonora Meleti called for the immediate identification and removal of child abuse material, with automatic reporting to the competent authorities, as well as strict sanctions for digital platforms that repeatedly fail to comply. “We will think of our children, not the platforms,” he said, while stressing the need to criminalise the possession and distribution of child abuse material created through artificial intelligence, warning of the new dangers posed by the use of technology for criminal purposes.
Concluding her intervention, she reiterated her proposal to ban access to digital platforms for children under 15, recalling that this proposal had already been adopted in the context of an opinion on the protection of minors online.
The full text of the intervention follows:
“3500 children fall victim to abuse, harassment and manipulation online every month. 3.4 million videos prove it. Platforms can track the material, but they don’t. And we here are late, lost in discussions and negotiations. We have to get it over with. We need child abuse material to be identified immediately and for any platform that does not get the word out, to be banned from operating in Europe. We will look at our children, not the platforms.
Abuse material must also be taken down immediately, with automatic reporting to the authorities. Every minute the material remains there, pedophiles are fed and children are secondarily abused. It should be criminalized to possess and distribute AI child abuse material. Are you telling me that the content doesn’t remain sick because it’s fake? And finally, a ban on children under 15 accessing the platforms. I proposed this in my opinion on the protection of minors online, you voted for it, but now we have to put it into practice,” as reported by APE-MPA.
