An Update on Our Safety Efforts
Keeping people safe on Periscope is our top priority. Our committed team works around the clock to ensure the content on our service meets our Community Guidelines. In particular, and as stated in our Guidelines, we have zero tolerance for any form of child sexual exploitation (CSE) on Periscope, and anyone who violates our strict policies will be permanently banned. This includes directing inappropriate comments to minors during a broadcast. If you come across this type of content on Periscope, please report the broadcast to us immediately.
Removing Accounts that Violate our Rules
Since the beginning of 2017, we have banned more than 36,000 accounts for engaging or attempting to engage inappropriately with minors. One violation means permanent suspension — no exceptions. We will continue to aggressively enforce this policy to keep Periscope safe.
To supplement the efforts of people who report accounts that post these types of comments, we are working to implement new technology — similar to what we use on Twitter — to help us detect accounts that try to bypass account suspension as well as identify potentially violating accounts for review.
When we identify any CSE-related content, we remove it from Periscope without further notice and report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC in turn makes reports available to the appropriate US or international law enforcement agencies. In addition to working closely with partners like NCMEC and Thorn, a crucial part of our work is coordinating with law enforcement to provide information that can help prevent or prosecute these crimes. Twitter responds to valid legal process issued in compliance with applicable law as explained in our Law Enforcement Guidelines. We publish data of requests made to Twitter in-aggregate and twice-yearly in our Transparency Report.
Continued Work to Keep the Community Safe
During the coming weeks, we are making a number of changes to our policies, product, and processes to ensure Periscope continues to be a safe community.
We are updating our Community Guidelines to further clarify our zero tolerance policy for CSE and any related behaviors. To improve our community’s ability to report CSE, we are launching a new in-app reporting flow, a new option to flag comments, and updating our online reporting form with a Periscope-specific reporting option for any information people would like to share — even if the offending broadcast has been removed. Additionally, we are expanding the size of our team who reviews reports and investing in additional internal tooling to improve the speed and accuracy of our response.
We will continue to aggressively enforce our Community Guidelines in this area, as we remain committed in our fight against CSE on Periscope.
Update as of November 27, 2017: We have launched a new broadcast reporting option for “child safety” and a new option to flag “sexually inappropriate” comments. Read more about these changes in our help center.
