Users' Perceptions of Online Child Abuse Detection Mechanisms

Child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) online has become a major safety issue for children to access the Internet. To combat CSEA, electronics services providers (ESP) have implemented various mechanisms to detect child sexual abuse materials (CSAM). However, these mechanisms, despite their capability to prevent the mass distribution of CSAM online, may raise significant privacy concerns among general users. In this paper, we conducted a semi-structured interview study with 23 participants to understand their privacy perceptions of two types of online CSAM detection mechanisms. Our results suggested that users were concerned about the transparency of the detection process, inappropriate access to users' data, and unclear boundaries of such mechanisms. Our results also highlight that, even though the majority of participants choose to sacrifice their privacy for societal benefits, they still have privacy concerns that need to be addressed. We discuss the design and policy implications for ESP to improve users' awareness of the data practices of these mechanisms, alleviate users' privacy concerns, and increase societal benefits.