2022 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Child sexual assault imagery (CSAM) is on mainstream social platforms that we use every single day. The same ones that connect us to friends and family, are also destroying the lives of children whose sexual abuse has been filmed, then shared and reshared. Over and over again. Revictimizing the survivors with every new view.

It could easily be described as one of the world’s worst problems, that sadly, seems to be nobody’s problem to solve. There are no laws to force these platforms to take them down. And the platforms themselves do little, if anything at all to remove them. And while all platforms are failing our children, the failures of Twitter
are especially egregious.

Twitter boasts sending over 6,000 tweets every second and has demonstrated how a tweet can spread across the globe in a mere 15 seconds. Yet despite their scale and speed, Twitter does not offer the infrastructure to report any tweets as containing CSAM. In fact, among all popular platforms, Twitter’s reporting infrastructure has been ranked the worst. Without reporting ability, CSAM cannot be
promptly removed when found.

Knowing that most people are viscerally opposed to child abuse, their strategy was to shame Twitter into action by revealing their role
in the spread of CSAM.

On March 21st, Twitter would be turning 15 years old. While it’s a fun age for most, for survivors of CSAM, fifteen years of Twitter represents enduring years and years of their content being spread, popping up over and over again on this public platform. With 15 years of no action and no accountability, it was the perfect time to give survivors a voice to share the ‘gifts’ that Twitter had given them year over year.

Four days in advance of Twitter’s big day, they released a powerful video capturing the collective voices and raw emotion of real survivors. The film begins by wishing the social media giant a happy 15th birthday. The tone then begins to shift as the survivors recount their own experiences at that age: the abuse they suffered and the lengths they’ve gone to try and get Twitter to remove their
CSAM from the platform.

The video was released on the very platform where they wanted to bring change, using the reach and scale of Twitter against them. To ensure it spread just as quickly as the Twitter algorithm distributes content, they seeded the video with influential advocates ranging from celebrities like Ricky Martin and Mayim Bialik to New York Times investigative reporter Nicholas Kristoff and survivor advocates like Eliza Bleu. More information was shared on their microsite BirthdayPlea.com including the video, data on the scope of the problem and a custom birthday cake map, illustrating the speed at which Twitter can spread content around the globe.

The call-to-action was simple: share this message and
demand change from Twitter.

The four day campaign generated over 330 million impressions worldwide with coverage from Canada to the US and Asia. On Twitter alone, over 30 million impressions were generated with thousands of people sharing the #TwitterBirthdayPlea message, spreading far and wide - all without any paid media to support. Spreading around the globe, just as Twitter is famous for doing, messages of support came pouring in from the United States, Spain, Australia, Mexico, India, Germany and even Guyana.

Upon launch, the website saw hundreds of visits per day as people learned more about the problem and shared the video directly from their site. Within four days over 1,000 people shared the video with their own social networks directly from their site.

In the days following, Twitter refused to comment outside of their automated response in fear of adding more fuel to the fire.

In the weeks following the campaign, the hashtag #TwitterBirthdayPlea and video are still being shared across the platform. Two weeks after the campaign broke, The Five Eyes (an intelligence alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) invited the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to speak at a meeting concerning the global
epidemic of CSAM online.

Their only outstanding birthday wish is that Twitter would accept their gift of a free tool that would protect OUR kids, on YOUR platform. Because you are right Jack Dorsey, the material doesn’t violate your policy, it violates basic human decency.

Credits

Creative agencies: No Fixed Address and Mischief @ No Fixed Address
Dave Lafond, Executive Sponsor, Founder at No Fixed Address
Jordan Doucette, President at No Fixed Address
Greg Hahn, Co-Founder and CCO at Mischief @ No Fixed Address
Bianca Guimaraes, ECD at Mischief @ No Fixed Address
Kevin Mulroy, ECD at Mischief @ No Fixed Address
Josie Daga, EVP, General Managing Director at No Fixed Address
Sam Cote, ACD at No Fixed Address
Ryan D'zur, ACD at No Fixed Address
Pier-Philippe Rioux, Senior Designer at No Fixed Address
Madison Bell, Designer at No Fixed Address
Zach Klien, VP, Strategy at No Fixed Address
Darren Patey, VP, Creative Technology at No Fixed Address
Elli Raynai, Developer at No Fixed Address
Lara Tutton, Analyst at No Fixed Address
Will Dempster, VP, Content Production at No Fixed Address
Petra Simpson, Project Director at No Fixed Address
Erin Banting, Director, PR at No Fixed Address
Charlotte Macgregor, Senior Digital Strategist at No Fixed Address
Alex Choi, Account Director at No Fixed Address
Hailey Foreman, Account Executive at No Fixed Address
Oliver McAteer, Director of Development at Mischief @ No Fixed Address
Mackenzie Biddie, Senior Account Management, PR, at No Fixed Address
Naomi Redmon, Account Management, PR, at No Fixed Address

Production: AdHoc Content
Executive Producer, Sally Leggett
Line Producer, Haley Wiseman
Director, Dylan Maranda
DOP, Mack Callistan
AC, Max Litzgus
Gaffer, John Mauch
Key Grip, Josh Danniels
Sound, Sam Rodgers
HMU, Pippa Leavy
VTR/DIT, Steve Sangster

Editorial: Outsider
Editor, Sophia Lou
Editorial Producer, Kayan Choi
Assistant Editor, Calum Moore

VFX/Colour: Alter Ego
Colourist, Andrew Ross
Colour prep, James Graham
Jr. Online Artist, Hali Gale
Sr. Producer, Pallavi Joshi-Firby

Audio: OSO
Mix by Eric Van Mill
Executive Producer, Hannah Graham