#KEEPKIDSSAFEONLINE

"We welcome yesterday’s political agreement between the European Parliament negotiating team and the Council on the proposed interim legislation regarding the detection of child sexual abuse online by online communications services.

Throughout the years, these technological tools have proven instrumental to identify victims, help save children’s lives by bringing perpetrators to justice, and in some instances even in preventing the harm from happening in the first place.

In the midst of a pandemic that has disrupted millions of children’s lives in the EU – and globally – more than ever and where children’s presence online has skyrocketed – this agreement was long overdue. Recent figures from Europol and other organizations have clearly shown that children have been disproportionally exposed to fall victim of child sexual abuse online at the hands of sexual predators online.

With yesterday’s political agreement, children in the EU will be safer and perpetrators will be at a closer reach from being apprehended by law-enforcement authorities."

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Keep Kids Safe Online!

August 19, 2020: Boston Globe Magazine Article

ABOUT

Over the past few years, a coalition of women from the Women's Inclusion Project has been working with other women investors and with a coalition of other investment firms, as well as ICCR and with Christian Brothers Investment Services, on a number of shareholder engagements. Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) online has been growing at an explosive rate. This is an important issue, and we want to raise investor awareness. As shareholders in Facebook, we are concerned about regulatory risk, in particular. This is how #KeepKidsSafeOnline was born.

The key ask in our resolution is for a board-level report assessing the risk of increased sexual exploitation of children as the Company develops and offers additional privacy tools, such as end-to-end encryption. Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that end-to-end encryption will make it harder for Facebook to identify child abuse on the platform. It turns out we were prescient on filing our resolution, as there has been a recent related bipartisan bill in the Senate, the Earn-It Act, which puts pressure on tech companies relative to their exemption from liability for third-party content on their sites related to child abuse. There is likely to be further pressure on revenue and government regulation associated with this issue area.

In 2019, there were more than 16.9 million reports of child sexual abuse material online and, of that, 15.8 million – or 94 percent – came from the Facebook platform

Michael Passoff (2020)

We are proud of our friend and ally Cathy Rowan, who was a panelist on the UN High Level Political Forum 2020 Virtual Event: Stop Child Abuse in Social Media!

"The yearly event, known as the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, held this year from July 7 to July 16, provides a venue for U.N. member countries to highlight local progress as well as an opportunity for advocates to address concerns".

— Global Sisters Report

WHO WE ARE

#KeepKidsSafeOnline is a project of the Women’s Inclusion Project (WIP). WIP utilizes gender lens investment strategies to support women and girls. Our partner Proxy Impact provides shareholder advocacy and proxy voting services for impact investors. Together we engage companies to increase board gender diversity, expand the number of women in senior management, eliminate gender pay disparities, and stop online child sexual exploitation.

If you would like to be an ally, please see the contact information below.

One Third of Internet users are children and 800 million kids now are on social media.

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Our Children

Facebook's planned encryption, warning that it will cloak the actions of child predators and make children more vulnerable to sexual abuse. By moving to end-to-end encryption without first taking steps to stop child sexual abuse on its platforms, Facebook will effectively make invisible 70 percent of CSAM cases – an estimated 12 million instances – that are currently being detected and reported.

Proxy Impact Press Release, June 9, 2020