The nation’s leading nonprofit organization fighting sexual exploitation in the U.S. has released a list of 12 survivors of online exploitation who it says “were silenced” because of a shield law granting immunity to Big Tech platforms.

Known as the “Dirty Dozen List,” the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) has released an annual list since 2013 that has highlighted companies that have been “mainstream contributors of sexual exploitation,” including Apple, Meta, Spotify, Reddit, and others. The organization has noted that the campaign “has yielded major victories at Google, Netflix, TikTok, Hilton Worldwide, Verizon, Walmart,” and others.

But for the 2025 list released Thursday, NCOSE chose to put the spotlight on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which the organization has described as “the greatest enabler of online sexual exploitation.” First enacted in 1996, the law was originally meant to help online businesses grow without being encumbered by being held liable for content posted by third parties. But as NCOSE has noted, the law has remained unchanged “despite the rise of deepfake technology and widespread application of AI” as well as the exponential growth of American internet users from 20 million in 1996 to over 300 million today.

“Online sexual abuse is rising exponentially but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is preventing survivors from receiving justice,” remarked Haley McNamara, senior vice president at NCOSE. “Laws should protect those who have experienced horrific crimes, but instead, Section 230 gives online platforms broad immunity for crimes committed on their sites. This must end.”

To highlight the growing crisis over Section 230, NCOSE’s 2025 “Dirty Dozen List” features 12 survivors of online exploitation who have filed lawsuits against Big Tech platforms, but have been largely unsuccessful due to the shield law.

Among the survivors include:

• A 15-year-old who “downloaded what he thought was a safe dating app, only for it to become the connection point between predators who raped him.”
• A 16-year-old who “felt fear and betrayal when her ex-boyfriend repeatedly shared explicit images of her on Reddit without consent. It got worse when she reported the images to Reddit, only for them to resurface again and again on the platform.”
• A woman who “was sex trafficked as a child, and her abuses were recorded and uploaded to a pornography website. Despite the videos being reported as child sexual abuse material, the website kept it up and profited.”
• “Jane Doe” was “sex trafficked as a minor and repeatedly raped over 1,000 times due to ads posted on Backpage’s ‘Escorts’ section. She was turned away from the courts because of CDA 230.”
• “A convicted predator used Snapchat to groom” a 12-year-old “into producing exploitive images (CSAM) through the app, and even traveled to her home. Snapchat failed to detect or remove the CSAM, which could have prevented her further abuse.”
• “B.” was “sex trafficked as a minor [and] repeatedly raped in hotel rooms arranged through Craigslist, where her trafficker advertised her. Craigslist knew there was sex trafficking on its site but let it fester.”
• A 15-year-old who “met a stranger with friends in common on Facebook — before long he used the messenger service to groom and exploit her, leading to her being trafficked, raped, and abused.”

“Section 230 has become a legal loophole that has been interpreted to broadly grant online platforms immunity from liability, even when they knowingly, recklessly, or negligently enable child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and other harms,” stated Dani Pinter, senior vice president and director of the Law Center for NCOSE. “The only solution is for Congress to repeal Section 230 to hold Big Tech accountable, to give survivors access to justice, and to prevent online sexual abuse and exploitation at mass-scale.”

Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, concurred, insisting that social media platforms must be held individually liable for permitting sexual exploitation.

“The internet has brought about many changes in our lives — some of them good, some of them bad. Perhaps the worst change is the increase in sexual exploitation,” she told The Washington Stand. “The companies who have enabled and profited from sexual exploitation and abuse must be held accountable. Companies like Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, and Craigslist cannot be allowed to profit from and claim immunity from prosecution for sexual exploitation.”