Facebook reports BBC to police over ‘sexualized’ child images

The incident occurred as part of a BBC investigation into whether Facebook is adequately dealing with inappropriate images. (Reuters)

DUBAI: According to the BBC on Tuesday, Facebook asked the news organization to send it sexualized images of children and then reported it to the police for doing so.
The incident occurred as part of a BBC investigation into whether Facebook is adequately dealing with inappropriate images of minors on its platform.
The BBC reported that “the social network’s [UK] Director of Policy Simon Milner agreed to be interviewed last week, on condition the BBC provided examples of the material that it had reported, but had not been removed by moderators.
“The BBC did so, but was reported to the UK’s National Crime Agency as a consequence.
“When provided with examples of the images, Facebook reported the BBC journalists involved to the police and canceled plans for an interview,” a report published on the BBC website on Tuesday states.
The news organization said it used Facebook’s “report” button to alert the social media giant to more than 100 images hosted on pages advertised to men such as one called “hot xxx schoolgirls” and one with “images of under-16s in highly sexualized poses.”
According to the BBC, Facebook only removed 18 of the images and automated replies stated that the other 82 failed to breach Facebook’s community guidelines.
According to Business Insider on Tuesday, Facebook says it has now removed all the images reported by the BBC and reported itself to the police for hosting such images.
The news site was provided with a statement from the office of UK Director of Policy Simon Milner which read: “We have carefully reviewed the content referred to us and have now removed all items that were illegal or against our standards. This content is no longer on our platform…It is against the law for anyone to distribute images of child exploitation. When the BBC sent us such images we followed our industry’s standard practice and reported them to CEOP (the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center).”