Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Nudity

We also work with external experts, including the Meta Safety Advisory Board, to discuss and improve our policies and enforcement around online safety issues, especially with regard to children. Learn more about the technology we’re using to fight against child exploitation.

Child sexual exploitation

Content, activity, or interactions that threaten, depict, praise, support, provide instructions for, make statements of intent, admit participation in, or share links of the sexual exploitation of children (including real minors, toddlers, or babies, or non-real depictions with a human likeness, such as in art, AI-generated content, fictional characters, dolls, etc). This includes but is not limited to:

• Sexual intercourse
  • Explicit sexual intercourse or oral sex, defined as mouth or genitals entering or in contact with another person's genitals or anus, when at least one person's genitals or anus is visible.
  • Implied sexual intercourse or oral sex, including when contact is imminent or not directly visible.
  • Stimulation of genitals or anus, including when activity is imminent or not directly visible.
  • Any of the above involving an animal.
• Children with sexual elements, including but not limited to:
  • Restraints
  • Signs of arousal
  • Focus on genitals or anus
  • Presence of aroused adult
  • Presence of sex toys or use of any object for sexual stimulation, gratification, or sexual abuse
  • Sexualized costume
  • Stripping
  • Staged environment (for example, on a bed) or professionally shot (quality/focus/angles)
  • Open-mouth kissing
  • Stimulation of human nipples or squeezing of female breast (EXCEPT in the context of breastfeeding)
  • Presence of by-products of sexual activity
• Content involving children in a sexual fetish context
• Content that supports, promotes, advocates or encourages participation in pedophilia unless it is discussed neutrally in a health context
• Content that identifies or mocks alleged victims of child sexual exploitation by name or image

Solicitation

Content that solicits sexual content or activity depicting or involving children, defined as:

• Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)
• Nude imagery of real or non-real children
• Sexualized imagery of real or non-real children

Content that solicits sexual encounters with children

Inappropriate interactions with children

Content that constitutes or facilitates inappropriate interactions with children, such as:

• Arranging or planning real-world sexual encounters with children
• Purposefully exposing children to sexually explicit language or sexual material
• Engaging in implicitly sexual conversations in private messages with children
• Obtaining or requesting sexual material from children in private messages

Exploitative intimate imagery and sextortion

Content that attempts to exploit real children by:

• Coercing money, favors or intimate imagery with threats to expose real or non-real intimate imagery or information
• Sharing, threatening, or stating an intent to share private sexual conversations or real or non-real intimate imagery

Sexualization of children

• Content (including photos, videos, real-world art, digital content, and verbal depictions) that sexualizes real or non-real children
• Groups, Pages, and profiles dedicated to sexualizing real or non-real children

Child nudity

Content that depicts real or non-real child nudity where nudity is defined as:

• Close-ups of real or non-real children’s genitalia
• Real or non-real nude toddlers, showing:
  • Visible genitalia, even when covered or obscured by transparent clothing
  • Visible anus and/or fully nude close-up of buttocks
• Real or non-real nude minors, showing:
  • Visible genitalia (including genitalia obscured only by pubic hair or transparent clothing)
  • Visible anus and/or fully nude close-up of buttocks
  • Uncovered female nipples
  • No clothes from neck to knee - even if no genitalia or female nipples are showing
• Unless the non-real imagery is for health purposes or is a non-sexual depiction of child nudity in real-word art

Non-sexual child abuse

Videos or photos that depict real or non-real non-sexual child abuse regardless of sharing intent, unless the imagery is from real-world art, cartoons, movies or video games

Content that praises, supports, promotes, advocates for, provides instructions for or encourages participation in non-sexual child abuse

• We may restrict access to products and features (e.g., the ability to message certain other users) for adults based on their interactions with other accounts, searches for or interactions with violating content, or membership in communities (e.g. Groups) we have removed for violating our policies.

• Videos or photos that depict police officers or military personnel committing non-sexual child abuse
• Videos or photos of non-sexual child abuse, when law enforcement, child protection agencies, or trusted safety partners request that we leave the content on the platform for the express purpose of bringing a child back to safety

• Videos or photos of violent immersion of a child in water in the context of religious rituals

For the following content, we include a warning label so that people are aware that the content may be sensitive:

• Imagery posted by a news agency that depicts child nudity in the context of famine, genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity, unless accompanied by a violating caption or shared in a violating context, in which case the content is removed

We may remove imagery depicting the aftermath of non-sexual child abuse when reported by news media partners, NGOs, or other trusted safety partners.

We may remove content that identifies alleged victims of child sexual exploitation through means other than name or image if content includes information that is likely to lead to the identification of the individual.

We may remove content created for the purpose of identifying a private minor if there is a risk to the minor’s safety, when requested by Law Enforcement, Government, Trusted Partner, or the content is self-reported by the minor or the minor’s parent/legal guardian