CEO and child protection advocate Sarah Gardner joins me this week to talk all about safety online. Sarah leads the Heat Initiative, a company built to pressure Apple to remove child sexual abuse material from all of its platforms. This is definitely an intense episode, but Sarah explains the issue in a very accessible way and I learned so much from her.
We discuss exactly what child sexual abuse material entails and how many children it affects, as well as the exact moment Sarah knew she needed to do something about this problem. Sarah explains how both children's safety and users' privacy can be maintained through the detection of imagery in iCloud and we talk about why it has been so difficult to convince Apple to implement this feature.
We end with a conversation about the ethics of family vloggers and what it means to share your kids online for the whole world to see.
Content warning: Today's episode focuses on issues around child sexual abuse. If you are comfortable and able to listen, you will learn so much from Sarah this episode. However, if this topic isn't for you, feel free to skip this one.
The Heat Initiative: https://heatinitiative.org/
Also available as a video podcast on YouTube.
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Host: Ally Petitti
Producer/Editor: Eliza Laycock
Research: Jillian Himmelwright
Additional Support: Kayla Cunningham
Camera/Audio: Ilja Maran and Nathan Sacharow