Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn sent a formal letter to MediaLab CEO Michael Heyward, demanding answers about how the messaging app Kik protects minors from sexual exploitation. The letter comes after the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) released a report showing severe safety flaws on the platform.
Report Reveals Safety Flaws
To test the app’s protections, researchers created a Kik profile using the username “Im12BeNice.” According to the report, adult users almost immediately flooded the account with sexually explicit messages, nude photos, and requests for sexual conversations, even though the username clearly implied the user was 12 years old.
Blackburn called the situation “disgusting” and said it “must immediately come to a stop.” She pointed out that while Kik claims to be a platform meant only for users 18 and older, it does not actually require age verification. The senator also noted that the app’s explicit content filters completely failed to block the inappropriate messages sent to the NCOSE test account, even though those filters were turned on at the time.
The problem appears to be a long-standing issue for the app. According to Bark, a company that makes parental control software, Kik has been either the first or second most reported app for exposing children to severe sexual content for five years running.
Criminal Cases Linked to the Platform
Blackburn’s letter also highlighted several recent criminal cases linked to the platform. On May 20, a repeat offender was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for trading child sexual abuse material on Kik. That same day, another man pleaded guilty to forcing a minor to self-produce abuse material on the platform. In March, a former teacher was arrested for uploading similar material to the app.
Heyward has been given until June 19 to respond to ten specific questions from the lawmaker. Blackburn is asking for exact numbers on how many accounts have been terminated for child abuse violations in the last five years, what risk assessments were done before Kik launched a stranger-matching tool called Kik-it, and why the platform’s content filters failed during the NCOSE test.
Blackburn is currently sponsoring the Kids Online Safety Act, legislation that would legally require social media companies like Kik to design their platforms with strict child safety safeguards already built in.
Original reporting: Tampa Free Press — read the source article.
