2021 Winner
2021 Winners
Canadian Centre for Child Protection
Happy Birthday Twitter
Child sexual assault material (CSAM) is on mainstream social platforms that we use every single day. The same ones that connect us to friends and family are also destroying the lives of children whose sexual abuse has been filmed, then shared and reshared. Over and over again.
And while all platforms are failing our children, the failures of Twitter are especially egregious. In fact, just last year there was an increase of 42% of child sexual abuse material being shared on the platform.
So, how does one educate and enrage people with the truth of the enormous failures of Twitter to put pressure on the platform? With no paid media budget, No Fixed Address needed to ensure this conversation spread around the globe, making it unignorable for the platform.
People think that CSAM lives in the murky corners of the dark web, but in reality, their favourite social media platforms, like Twitter, are hot spots for CSAM activity. Armed with the knowledge that survivors plead with Twitter for their content’s removal without success, NFA used this insight to their advantage to engage the general public to put pressure on Twitter to take action.
Knowing that most people are viscerally opposed to child abuse, their strategy was to shame Twitter into action by revealing their role in the spread of CSAM.
Tweets spread at alarming rates. In fact, on Twitter’s 10th birthday, they publicly celebrated the fact that their tweets can span the globe in seconds. Yet, they accept no responsibility when it comes to child sexual abuse material being shared on their site.
Upon discovering that their 15th birthday was around the corner, NFA knew they could hijack the conversation and use the event to shift the focus for their purposes. While it’s a fun age for most, for survivors of CSAM, fifteen years of Twitter represents enduring years and years of their content being spread, popping up over and over again on this public platform. With 15 years of no action and no accountability, it was the perfect time to give survivors a voice to share the ‘gifts’ that Twitter had given them year over year.
Four days in advance of Twitter’s big day, they released a powerful video capturing the collective voices and raw emotion of real survivors. The film begins by wishing the social media giant a happy 15th birthday. The tone then begins to shift as the survivors recount their own experiences at that age—the abuse they suffered and the lengths they’ve gone to try and get Twitter to remove their CSAM from the platform.
The video was released on the very platform where they wanted to bring change, using the reach and scale of Twitter against them. To ensure it spread just as quickly as the Twitter algorithm distributes content, they seeded the video with influential advocates ranging from celebrities like Ricky Martin and Mayim Bialik to New York Times investigative reporter Nicholas Kristoff and survivor advocates like Eliza Bleu. More information was shared on the microsite BirthdayPlea.com including the video, data on the scope of the problem and a custom birthday cake map, illustrating the speed at which Twitter can spread content around the globe.
The call-to-action was simple: share this message and demand change from Twitter.
The four day campaign generated over 330 million impressions worldwide with coverage from Canada to the USA and Asia. On Twitter alone, over 30 million impressions were generated with thousands of people sharing the #TwitterBirthdayPlea message, spreading far and wide, all without any paid media to support. And just like CSAM is permitted to do on a daily basis on Twitter, the message spread around the world in a matter of minutes. In fact, messages of support came pouring in from over 30 different countries.
Weeks following the campaign, the hashtag #TwitterBirthdayPlea and video are still being shared across the platform. Two weeks after the campaign broke, The Five Eyes (an intelligence alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) invited the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to speak at a meeting concerning the global epidemic of CSAM online.
And while all platforms are failing our children, the failures of Twitter are especially egregious. In fact, just last year there was an increase of 42% of child sexual abuse material being shared on the platform.
So, how does one educate and enrage people with the truth of the enormous failures of Twitter to put pressure on the platform? With no paid media budget, No Fixed Address needed to ensure this conversation spread around the globe, making it unignorable for the platform.
People think that CSAM lives in the murky corners of the dark web, but in reality, their favourite social media platforms, like Twitter, are hot spots for CSAM activity. Armed with the knowledge that survivors plead with Twitter for their content’s removal without success, NFA used this insight to their advantage to engage the general public to put pressure on Twitter to take action.
Knowing that most people are viscerally opposed to child abuse, their strategy was to shame Twitter into action by revealing their role in the spread of CSAM.
Tweets spread at alarming rates. In fact, on Twitter’s 10th birthday, they publicly celebrated the fact that their tweets can span the globe in seconds. Yet, they accept no responsibility when it comes to child sexual abuse material being shared on their site.
Upon discovering that their 15th birthday was around the corner, NFA knew they could hijack the conversation and use the event to shift the focus for their purposes. While it’s a fun age for most, for survivors of CSAM, fifteen years of Twitter represents enduring years and years of their content being spread, popping up over and over again on this public platform. With 15 years of no action and no accountability, it was the perfect time to give survivors a voice to share the ‘gifts’ that Twitter had given them year over year.
Four days in advance of Twitter’s big day, they released a powerful video capturing the collective voices and raw emotion of real survivors. The film begins by wishing the social media giant a happy 15th birthday. The tone then begins to shift as the survivors recount their own experiences at that age—the abuse they suffered and the lengths they’ve gone to try and get Twitter to remove their CSAM from the platform.
The video was released on the very platform where they wanted to bring change, using the reach and scale of Twitter against them. To ensure it spread just as quickly as the Twitter algorithm distributes content, they seeded the video with influential advocates ranging from celebrities like Ricky Martin and Mayim Bialik to New York Times investigative reporter Nicholas Kristoff and survivor advocates like Eliza Bleu. More information was shared on the microsite BirthdayPlea.com including the video, data on the scope of the problem and a custom birthday cake map, illustrating the speed at which Twitter can spread content around the globe.
The call-to-action was simple: share this message and demand change from Twitter.
The four day campaign generated over 330 million impressions worldwide with coverage from Canada to the USA and Asia. On Twitter alone, over 30 million impressions were generated with thousands of people sharing the #TwitterBirthdayPlea message, spreading far and wide, all without any paid media to support. And just like CSAM is permitted to do on a daily basis on Twitter, the message spread around the world in a matter of minutes. In fact, messages of support came pouring in from over 30 different countries.
Weeks following the campaign, the hashtag #TwitterBirthdayPlea and video are still being shared across the platform. Two weeks after the campaign broke, The Five Eyes (an intelligence alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) invited the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to speak at a meeting concerning the global epidemic of CSAM online.