Why Our Work with the Adult Sector is Vital

Two years ago, IWF took a conscious and deliberate decision to work with companies which specialise in adult content. For many years, we’ve been working with a whole range of other types of companies and platforms, websites and online spaces where sexual pictures and recordings of children may be uploaded, shared, stored and consumed. Doing this is absolutely vital if we’re to make progress on our mission to eliminate online child sexual abuse material.

IWF is striving to create a world which is safe for children and adults and where victims and survivors of child sexual abuse are protected from repeated victimisation.

Our mission informs and drives all our work. Our staff are dedicated to this goal. We recruit resilient people, highly train them to be Internet Content Analysts, and they are the frontline for fighting online child sexual abuse imagery in the UK – and beyond. Professor Alexis Jay, at the conclusion of the UK’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, described the IWF as “sitting at the heart of the national response.” And our legal system recognises the importance of our work by granting our analysts the near-unique ability to proactively search the internet for criminal content in order to get it taken down.

We have always been transparent about who we work with and how. Since IWF was founded 28 years ago, partnership working has sat at the core. Child sexual abuse imagery online is a global problem, requiring effective global solutions and with the support of companies, civil society, law enforcement and governments worldwide.  

It’s vital, therefore, that big tech companies, platforms, and websites help our mission by deploying our data and tools to keep their corner of the internet safe. It is in this spirit we have partnered with Aylo when we formed our first strategic partnership with the adult sector almost two years ago.

Within this partnership, we developed the Adult Sector Standard of Good Practice. This was informed and overseen by an external advisory board. It spent time looking at various trust and safety tools, and the effectiveness of them to identify and prevent child sexual abuse imagery.

Our partnership with Aylo helps to show what practical cross industry collaboration and leadership can look like, sets a positive example, and make a safer internet for all. And the fact is, in the past few years, we’ve found zero confirmed cases of child sexual abuse imagery on its sites.

The Standard of Good Practice which was launched in May this year should be adopted and adhered to by all organisations in the adult sector. Our aim is to raise the standards of trust and safety to protect children and specifically, those children who have been sexually abused.

Companies will be audited by an independent third party against the Standard before they can be accepted as an IWF Member.

Our work in this space has been recognised by others, including those leading the UK’s Independent Pornography Review. Millions of consumers around the world view adult content every day. It would be irresponsible not to partner with these content providers. We must work as one to raise the standards across the internet as a whole in order to protect children, prevent criminal content and create a safer internet for us all. This should be a conscious and deliberate decision for everyone doing their best to prevent child sexual abuse imagery proliferating online.