How Do Pedophiles Tweet? Investigating the Writing Styles and Online Personas of Child Cybersex Traffickers in the Philippines

TL;DR

This study investigates how child sex traffickers use Twitter in the Philippines to spread illegal content and target minors, analyzing their writing styles and online personas with NLP techniques.

Contribution

It provides a novel analysis of traffickers' online behavior and roles on Twitter, highlighting specific language patterns and social roles involved in child pornography proliferation.

Findings

Identified frequently used words and co-occurring terms among traffickers.

Discovered four main roles played by traffickers in content dissemination.

Highlighted linguistic patterns associated with trafficking activities.

Abstract

One of the most important humanitarian responsibility of every individual is to protect the future of our children. This entails not only protection of physical welfare but also from ill events that can potentially affect the mental well-being of a child such as sexual coercion and abuse which, in worst-case scenarios, can result to lifelong trauma. In this study, we perform a preliminary investigation of how child sex peddlers spread illegal pornographic content and target minors for sexual activities on Twitter in the Philippines using Natural Language Processing techniques. Results of our studies show frequently used and co-occurring words that traffickers use to spread content as well as four main roles played by these entities that contribute to the proliferation of child pornography in the country.