I have read Facebook's report on this. It's not 20 million shares of kids getting raped by adults.

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/preventing-child-exploitat...

"We found that more than 90% of this content was the same as or visually similar to previously reported content. And copies of just six videos were responsible for more than half of the child exploitative content we reported in that time period."

"we evaluated 150 accounts that we reported to NCMEC for uploading child exploitative content in July and August of 2020 and January 2021, and we estimate that more than 75% of these people did not exhibit malicious intent (i.e. did not intend to harm a child). Instead, they appeared to share for other reasons, such as outrage or in poor humor"

So a lot of this is memetic spreading, not pedos and child abusers sharing their stash of porn. And people don't react to child porn by spreading it like a meme on Facebook, so what are these pictures that get shared a lot? What's happening is people find a funny/hilarious/outrageous picture and share that. Funny moments might happen when kids play with pets, for example.

The other part is consenting teens sexting their own photos. And then there's some teens (e.g. 17-year-olds, which by the way is old enough to consent in some countries) getting accidentally shared along with adult porn by people who don't know the real age.

https://research.fb.com/blog/2021/02/understanding-the-inten...

"Unintentional Offenders: This is a broad category of people who may not mean to cause harm to the child depicted in the CSAM share but are sharing out of humor, outrage, or ignorance.

Example: User shares a CSAM meme of a child’s genitals being bitten by an animal because they think it’s funny.

Minor Non-Exploitative Users: Children who are engaging in developmentally normative behaviour, that while technically illegal or against policy, is not inherently exploitative, but does contain risk.

Example: Two 16 year olds sending sexual imagery to each other. They know each other from school and are currently in a relationship.

Situational “Risky” Offenders: Individuals who habitually consume and share adult sexual content, and who come into contact with and share CSAM as part of this behaviour, potentially without awareness of the age of subjects in the imagery they have received or shared.

Example: A user received CSAM that depicts a 17 year old, they are unaware that the content is CSAM. They reshare it in a group where people are sharing adult sexual content."

So there's reason to think that the vast majority of this stuff isn't actually child porn in the sense that people think about it. It might be inappropriate to post, it might be technically illegal, but it's not what you think. And if it's not child porn, you can't make the case that it's creating a market for child abuse. By reporting it, you're not catching child rapists.

I don't have a reference handy but I recall reading about the actual child porn that inevitably does get shared on every platform, much of it is posted by bots over VPNs or tor. So its volume isn't representative of the amount of child abusers on the network, and reporting these accounts is not likely to lead to anything.

Also: In May 2019 the UK’s Independent Enquiry into Child Sexual Abuse heard that reports received by the National Crime Authority from the United States hotline NCMEC included large numbers of non-actionable images including cartoons, along with personally identifiable information of those responsible for uploading them. According to Swiss police, up to 90% of the reports received from NCMEC relate to innocent images. Source: https://www.article19.org/resources/inhope-members-reporting...

Out of those remaining 10%, how much leads to convictions? Very little. Sorry can't dig up a source right now. Point is: millions of reports lead to mostly nothing. Meanwhile, children continue to be abused for real, and the vast majority of those who want to keep producing, sharing, and storing such imagery surely have heard the news and will find a different way to do it.

Platform operators are incentivized to report everything, if they're playing the reporting game. Tick box "nudity or sexual conduct", tick box "contains minors"? Report it.

It doesn't help the discussion at all that everything involving nudity and minors (even cartoons) gets lumped together as "CSAM" with actual child porn produced by adults who physically abuse kids.