Real Time Threats: CSEA Prevention on Livestreaming Platforms
Finds real-time/ephemeral video creates distinct detection and enforcement challenges for child sexual exploitation prevention that existing moderation tooling is poorly equipped to handle.
Executive summary
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This CDT report examines the trust and safety tools and practices that platforms and third-party vendors use to detect and prevent child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) on livestreaming services. It concludes that moderating live, ephemeral video is technically harder than moderating static content, since nothing is known in advance: detection relies on predictive computer-vision models, audio transcription and text classification, and behavioral signals drawn from suspicious account activity.
The report describes an industry shift toward a "predict and disrupt" posture for CSEA prevention, borrowing techniques more common in cybersecurity and fraud detection than traditional content moderation, aimed at intervening before harmful streams reach an audience rather than only removing content after the fact.
It also notes a general reluctance among platforms and vendors to disclose how these detection systems work, a choice typically justified as preventing bad actors from reverse-engineering and evading enforcement, but one that limits external scrutiny of how well the tools actually perform.
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