Parents and educators have a new tool to fight online exploitation.
Meta announced Tuesday that courses aimed at helping middle school students discover and avoid online exploitation, including a technology commonly known as Sexttort.
The victims of this exploitation often think they are communicating with another teenager and end up sharing their own graphic or clear image. Then, unless the victim pays, the person threatens to disclose the image.
Parents need to talk to their children about this online danger now
Childhelp, a leading child safety nonprofit, has developed the course in partnership with META and consulted with other subject matter experts, including the Department of Homeland Security and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Adults can get educational materials for free.
These contents provide videos, scripted lesson plans and interactive classroom activities. The goal is to help young people understand personal boundaries, safe relationships and how to seek help.
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“As the dangers online increase, this partnership will enable facilitators of the course to enable millions of young people to speak out and feel comfortable in seeking help,” Michael Medoro, chief of staff at Childhelp, said in a statement. .”
While one in seven can happen on any platform and among people you know in person, criminals and scammers have used meta to target victims.
Last year, the company deleted at least 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria that attempted to extort the financial status of the victims. These scams are highly coordinated and relied in part on thousands of Facebook assets such as accounts, pages and groups that sell scripts and guides for how to use photo sets to scam people to fill fake accounts.
In October 2024, Meta social media platform Instagram launched its own campaign for Sextortion, as well as tools to help teen victims.
As the meta appears to have increased resources to prevent exploitation and aid victims, it has come under fire for abandoning fact-checking and relaxing certain hate speech policies.
“At Meta, we will continue to do our best to protect young people in the app, and these protections will be more effective if teenagers also have the confidence to spot potential hazards and know where to seek help. ” Antigone Davis, global head of Meta, said in a statement about the new course.
If you are a child with linear exploitation, or you know a child with linear exploitation, or you have witnessed the exploitation of your child, you can report it onlineoperated by the State's missing center for exploitation and children.
