Our kids are rising up in a digital world, and predators are profiting from this new actuality—exploiting kids in these digital areas and creating new vulnerabilities for them.
Day-after-day, tons of of hundreds of photos and movies of youngsters struggling a few of the worst sexual abuse conceivable are being shared on-line, whereas the kid victims wait to be discovered. Final yr alone, greater than 100 recordsdata of kid sexual abuse materials had been reported every minute.
New threats like monetary sextortion and deepfake nudes are regularly rising, whereas persistent risks like on-line grooming are accelerating.
A current Thorn survey discovered that 40% of children aged 9-17 have been approached on-line in an try to befriend and manipulate them. To place it into perspective, that’s roughly 710,000 children within the San Francisco Bay space being focused for grooming.
The dimensions, severity, and protracted progress of this drawback make it clear: baby sexual exploitation and abuse is a world public well being disaster that calls for an pressing, coordinated response.
Our kids can’t wait.
This heartbreaking actuality calls for a extra complete method to defending kids, which is why we’re introducing our subsequent chapter with a brand new Thorn mission assertion: to remodel how kids are shielded from sexual abuse and exploitation within the digital age.
We’re constructing a digital security web for youngsters—a multi-layered safety technique for the digital world. Whereas playgrounds have been designed with security surfaces and automobiles geared up with security restraints, the digital areas the place kids now spend a lot of their time stay dangerously unprotected.
Our digital security web addresses this pressing hole by way of cutting-edge expertise, unique analysis, and collaborative partnerships. It creates a number of layers of safety that work collectively to remodel how kids are protected by:
Creating safer on-line environments and making the web an unwelcoming place for abuse.Lowering the time it takes for investigators to seek out baby victims and take away them from hurt.Empowering the broader baby safety group with the newest analysis and technical assets to raised fight abuse.
To perform this transformation, we’ve recognized 4 pillars on which our work will focus going ahead. Collectively, these pillars create an built-in framework for transferring the whole baby security ecosystem ahead.
4 pillars to help the brand new Thorn mission.
Analysis and InsightsUnderstanding the quickly altering nature of kid sexual abuse and exploitation is prime to our mission. At Thorn, we don’t simply reply to threats—we get forward of them by way of rigorous analysis that facilities on the experiences of younger folks themselves and growing security frameworks to handle these threats.
With our novel analysis, we’re not simply gathering insights—we’re driving consciousness and motion throughout platforms, NGOs, policymakers, and regulation enforcement businesses worldwide. By mapping digital threats and growing security frameworks for vital applied sciences, we’re making a basis for all our work and accelerating the responsiveness of the whole baby safety ecosystem.
Technical InnovationTechnological advances that create new dangers may also be our strongest safety instruments. At Thorn, our world-class machine studying engineers harness the ability of AI to construct detection instruments and security applied sciences that regularly enhance and maintain tempo with rising harms.
This technical innovation is a vital a part of our digital security web, because it powers our different pillars, offering the important instruments for baby sufferer identification and platform security options. We stay on the forefront of kid safety expertise by sustaining and regularly enhancing our picture, video, and textual content classification capabilities whereas additionally addressing rising threats with new technological options.
Youngster Sufferer IdentificationBehind each picture or video of abuse is an actual baby ready to be discovered and shielded from hurt. When a baby is in an lively abuse scenario, each second issues—but investigators face a frightening needle-in-a-haystack problem, sifting by way of overwhelming volumes of digital proof to seek out the kids who need assistance most urgently. In any case, discovering related, actionable data rapidly is important for shielding a sufferer; whether or not an investigator is sorting by way of tens of millions of photos and messages on the darkish net to establish baby victims being actively abused, or triaging the hundreds of circumstances of their jurisdiction reported by way of NCEMC’s CyberTipline.
Our latest product, Thorn Detect, is a strong device in forensic investigations. It helps investigators prioritize probably the most vital recordsdata amid overwhelming case volumes by rapidly detecting potential baby sexual abuse photos and movies. The suggestions we’ve obtained confirms what we’ve all the time believed: after we equip the frontlines with higher expertise, extra kids are discovered quicker and faraway from dangerous conditions. I’m significantly proud that our sufferer identification instruments at the moment are being utilized in 36 nations worldwide, throughout 700 regulation enforcement businesses, creating a really world impression for youngsters in peril.
Platform SecurityEach time a picture or video of kid sexual abuse is shared on-line, it perpetuates trauma for the sufferer. That’s why our platform security pillar is devoted to combating baby sexual abuse and exploitation throughout the open net by equipping tech platforms with purpose-built options and knowledgeable consulting.
In 2024, our impression on this space reached an unprecedented scale:
Over 4.1 million suspected CSAM recordsdata had been detected utilizing our instruments Greater than 112 billion whole recordsdata had been processed by way of our detection expertise 60+ firms at the moment are utilizing Thorn’s CSAM detection merchandise to create safer digital environments
Wanting ahead
This evolution of our mission isn’t nearly responding to as we speak’s threats—it’s about constructing a sustainable framework that may adapt as expertise advances. The 4 pillars work collectively, every strengthening the others: analysis informs our expertise improvement, which powers sufferer identification and platform security options.
Our dual-income mannequin means three out of the 4 pillars are primarily philanthropically funded. The income from our tech business merchandise helps platform security, whereas analysis and insights, technical innovation, and baby sufferer identification depend on donor help to achieve our targets.
We have now lofty ambitions for 2025. This consists of persevering with to increase our Security by Design initiative for generative AI, releasing new and up to date analysis about youth’s experiences with sextortion and different on-line threats, and persevering with to construct superior detection instruments.
As we pursue our new mission, I invite you to affix us and assist rework how we shield children within the digital age. Collectively, we are able to construct a world the place each baby is free to easily be a child.
Thanks to your unwavering dedication to this mission and the kids we serve.
