Facebook accused of leaving ‘children broken as collateral damage’ by UK inquiry

During an Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), where evidence from various online companies such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Google on the initiatives taken by them to combat child abuse online was heard, Facebook has been accused of leaving ‘broken children as collateral damage’ for their commercial aims.

Barrister William Chapman, representing the abused victims, argued that the social media companies were not taking adequate measures to prevent paedophiles from reaching out to  children online due to their business models and that the time had come for these platforms to be ‘fundamentally redesigned’. Few recommendations shared by the victims before the inquiry for the tech companies included paying compensation to the children abused by their services and to ban posing as a child online, without reasonable excuse.