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Globe blocks websites promoting child pornography

by Izel Abanilla

TWO days after Republic Asia exposed pornography and prostitution on social media, particularly on Twitter, one of the country’s leading telco Globe Telecom has blocked 278,555 URLs and domains hosting child pornography from January to September to create a safer online space. 

Globe Chief Privacy Officer Irish Salandanan-Almeida said the company joins the government in its efforts to restrict access to illegal sites to keep the public safe online. 

Anton Bonifacio, Globe Chief Information and Security Officer, said: “We are relentless in boosting our capabilities to detect and block child pornography pages and other online content that are harmful to our customers. The astounding number of links we are able to block shows our vigilance and security efforts.”

Republic Act 9775, or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009, mandates that all internet service providers, such as Globe, to install technology, programs, or software to ensure that access to or transmittal of child pornography will be blocked or filtered. 

In its maiden  issue, Republic Asia on Saturday night featured the life stories of young porn stars and how they make money  by posting their naked bodies or having sex with fellow porn starts on the internet, particularly on Twitter.  They are all poor trying to make money.

According to a May 2020 global law enforcement data, the US-based International Justice Mission, said the “Philippines was the largest known source country of OSEC [online sexual exploitation of children] cases.”

Back in 2016, a similar study by the United Nations International Children’s Fund sounded a similar alarm saying “The Philippines has become the global epicenter of the live-stream sexual abuse trade, and many of the victims are children.”

Science of online flesh trade

Just as social media hastened communication globally, it also channeled a gateway for black market industries, specifically flesh trade. One prevalent scheme of online pornography and prostitution is the concept of “Alter” which has proven to be a thriving industry. 

Many are preferring Alter over manual sex work because of its ease and convenience.  One may simply film her/himself performing lewd actions and compile the contents in a repository link. From there, a porn content creator may now sell it to flesh-hungry customers for a “subscription” usually priced commensurate to the market value of the performer or the performance itself. 

Sans the physical exhaustion and the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, choosing the alterworld as against traditional prostitution, to some, is a no-brainer. 

This has lured many to dive into the industry not only because of profitability but a twisted idea of “fame” through a game of numbers as well. 

Evidently, players of the industry are mostly millennials, GenZ’s and alarmingly, minors. 

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