A survivor of child sexual abuse has issued a desperate appeal to Elon Musk, urging him to take stronger action against the circulation of exploitative material on his social media platform, X.
The woman, known as Zora to protect her identity, says her childhood abuse, which occurred over 20 years ago, continues to haunt her as images of that exploitation are still being shared and sold online.
“Hearing that my abuse – and the abuse of so many others – is still being circulated and commodified here is infuriating,” she said. “Every time someone sells or shares child abuse material, they directly fuel the original, horrific abuse. My body is not a commodity. It never has been, and it never will be.”
A BBC investigation into the global trade of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), estimated to be worth billions of dollars annually, found Zora’s images being advertised for sale on X. The account, traced to a trader in Indonesia, linked to a Telegram channel offering “VIP packages” of abuse images and videos to buyers worldwide.
Despite X’s stated “zero tolerance” for CSAM and claims that combating child exploitation is a top priority, activists argue that enforcement remains inadequate. Members of the hacktivist group Anonymous, who have been reporting such accounts, revealed that traders routinely set up dozens of replacement accounts after suspensions, making it difficult to eradicate the trade.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection confirmed the scale of the material being sold, describing collages of thousands of files offered to paedophiles. Among them were images of Zora, whose abuser in the US was prosecuted years ago, but not before the content spread globally.
The US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received more than 20 million reports of CSAM from tech companies in 2023 alone, underscoring the magnitude of the crisis.
For Zora, the persistence of her abuse online represents an ongoing violation. “I have tried over the years to overcome my past and not let it determine my future,” she said, “but perpetrators and stalkers still find a way to view this filth. Those who distribute this material are not passive bystanders, they are complicit perpetrators.”
