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Child Pornography Goes Viral on Facebook

Sometimes train wrecks and all other manner of ill-news offer a morbid fascination. This, hopefully, explains how a video of unknown origins managed to go viral on Facebook, despite that it depicted an infant being sexual abused by a grown man; within seven hours it has gained 32,000 shares and over 5,000 likes before Facebook removed it from the site, as reported by Gawker.

Some people seemed to be sharing it from sheer disgust, as if to say, “dear God, you wont’ believe this,” as one person shared a screenshot with the words. “MUFUCAS SICK shyt just ruined my day,” and naturally enough wished to ruin the day of his friends.

Whatever the case, Facebook took eight hours for its clean up crew to purge Facebook forums of the disturbing images. They already have an early-warning system with Microsoft’s PhotoDNA that is intended to avoid any exploitive images being shared on the network, which admittedly would be conducive for such activity if safeguards weren’t taken to prevent it.

Facebook said they worked “swiftly” to expunge the video and that they “have zero tolerance for child pornography being uploaded onto Facebook and are extremely aggressive in preventing and removing child exploitive content.”

Considering Facebook is a network for all ages of people, including children, it is absolutely necessary that this be their attitude, and we can only hope such rashes as this are quickly purged, if they occur again.

Daniel June: Daniel June studied English literature at Michigan State University, graduating in 2003. Working a potpourri of jobs since, from cake-decorator to proofreader, his passion has always been writing, resulting in books of essays, novels, and children’s novellas.