U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is investigating allegations of child sexual exploitation against Kik, a freeware instant messaging mobile app from the American company MediaLab AI Inc.
The senator’s concerns stem from a June 5 report by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) warning that the Kik app is “extremely dangerous for children,” after a NCOSE researcher created an account posing as a 12-year-old and, within seconds, was inundated with sexually abusive messages from strangers.
“Kik has followed a similar playbook as other social media companies: promise safety by design while simultaneously turning a blind eye to — or even allowing — the exploitation and abuse of minors,” Sen. Blackburn wrote in a June 12 letter sent to MediaLab CEO Michael Heyward. “This conduct is disgusting and must immediately come to a stop.”
The senator pointed out that after Kik was first exposed for years of rampant child abuse and sexual exploitation on the platform, it supposedly implemented several of NCOSE’s recommendations to improve safety on the app.
But according to Bark, a parental controls company, Kik has been either the first or second most reported app for children’s exposure to severe sexual content for the past five years, according to her letter.
“Kik purports to be an 18+ platform, meaning it feels no need to implement parental controls — and it lacks age verification,” Sen. Blackburn wrote. “The app still allows kids to connect with strangers through a rebranded stranger-connection tool — Kik-it — which puts users in private chats with strangers. Further, Kik’s sexual content filters did not work in NCOSE’s investigation.”
She has requested that Heyward answer numerous questions she has posed in her role as chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, including what measures Kik employs to verify users are at least 18 years old, what safeguards prevent adults from engaging in inappropriate conversations with minors, and how many accounts have been terminated for child sexual abuse material violations, among others.
“Children are being abused on your platform,” she wrote, “and it appears you are doing little to stop it.”