Child Online Safety Efforts Misallocate Resources from Real Threat of CSAM
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "The Lost Children of the Kids’ Online Safety Debate | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." March 5, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
Politicians are wasting time trying to regulate social media companies to protect kids online, when they should be focusing on the real problem: catching the criminals who create and distribute child sexual abuse material. Only police with arrest powers can stop these predators, not tech company policies.
Conclusion
Current legislative efforts to protect children online through tech regulation are misguided and distract from the real threat of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), which requires law enforcement solutions rather than social media regulation
Premises
- Tech regulation proposals are proliferating but lack coherence, creating a confused jumble of conflicting principles
- Current regulatory approaches target algorithms, speech restrictions, and age verification rather than the most serious threats
- CSAM reports increased over six thousandfold from 1998 to 2018 (from 3,000 to 18.4 million annually)
- CSAM is fundamentally a law enforcement problem requiring investigatory powers, arrests, and criminal prosecution
- Private companies cannot substitute for law enforcement officers with legal authority to use force against predators
- Lawmakers have neglected to fund adequate law enforcement efforts while focusing on tech company regulation
- The worst CSAM perpetrators are often sophisticated criminal organizations, not isolated individuals
Assumptions
- CSAM represents the most serious online threat to children compared to other harms
- Law enforcement is more effective than private company regulation at stopping child predation
- Current tech regulation proposals will not meaningfully reduce CSAM
- Resources spent on tech regulation could be better allocated to law enforcement
- The dramatic increase in CSAM reports reflects actual increases in abuse rather than just better reporting