[Air-L] New CDT report on Livestreaming and CSEA

[Dhanaraj Thakur]

Hi everyone,

We are excited to publish a new research report from the Center for 
Democracy & Technology (CDT <https://cdt.org/about/>) entitled "Real 
Time Threats: Analysis of Trust and Safety Practices for Child Sexual 
Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) Prevention on Livestreaming Platforms 
<https://cdt.org/insights/real-time-threats-analysis-of-trust-and-safety-practices-for-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-csea-prevention-on-livestreaming-platforms/>." 
We examine the range of trust and safety tools and practices that 
platforms and third-party vendors are developing and deploying to 
safeguard livestreaming services, with a special focus on CSEA 
prevention. These are critically important given the impacts on 
children, parents, and their communities.


We identified three main approaches:

  *

    Design based approaches — Steps taken before a user is able to
    stream, such as implementing friction and verification measures
    intended to make it more difficult for users, or suspicious users,
    to go live.

  *

    Content analysis approaches — Various forms of manual or automated
    content detection and analysis that can work on video, audio, and
    text as content is livestreamed.

  *

    Signal based approaches - Interventions based on the behavioral
    characteristics and metadata of user accounts.


While they can be useful these approaches raise significant concerns. 
First, there is a general trend to eschew transparency and clarity in 
how these systems operate and are deployed, ostensibly to prevent bad 
actors from circumventing them, but potentially to the detriment of 
survivors, users, policymakers, and other stakeholders. Second, and 
related to the first point, it is almost impossible to determine how 
effective these approaches are, what gaps they leave, whether they 
result in overmoderation of legitimate content, and how well they serve 
the needs of all stakeholders. Third, these approaches introduce 
significant security, privacy, free speech, and other human rights risks 
that can undermine the safety of the minors that they are meant to 
protect as well as that of users in general. We conclude with 
recommendations on how to address these concerns.


You can find the PDF of the "Real Time Threats …" report here 
<https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CDT-Research-Real-Time-Threats-hqp-final.pdf>which 
includes our policy recommendations to address this problem, or read 
threads on Twitter 
<https://x.com/CenDemTech/status/1859629915261247928>, Bsky 
<https://bsky.app/profile/cendemtech.bsky.social/post/3lbhtxol4t22h>, 
Linkedin 
<https://www.linkedin.com/posts/center-for-democracy-%26-technology_real-time-threats-analysis-of-trust-and-activity-7265395814884118530-BwrK>, 
and ​​Mastodon <https://techpolicy.social/@CenDemTech/113521808366045686>.


Please feel free to share and we welcome your feedback.

take care,

Dhanaraj

-- 

*Dhanaraj Thakur* (he/him) | Research Director
Center for Democracy & Technology |*cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>*
**dthakur at cdt.org | **+1 202 407 8849