A father who took a picture of his sick son's penis was caught by the anti-child abuse system and reported to the police.
Mark, a former software engineer in San Francisco, who was omitted from The Times' report, said he took pictures of his son's swollen penis on his phone.
Mark received a notification on his phone two days later that his account had been disabled because of harmful content.
Mark received a letter from the San Francisco Police Department stating that an investigator had served a search warrant on Google less than a week after Mark took the photos, requesting access to his internet searches, location history, messages, documents, photos, and videos. The investigator concluded there was no crime.
In order to detect and remove child sexual abuse material, a tool was developed by the company. If a photo is found to depict child sexual abuse, it will be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Mark was locked out of other online accounts when his account was disabled because he couldn't use his other online accounts.
Mark was told that his account would be permanently deleted after he tried to reactivate it, but was unsuccessful.
Insider asked for comment from the company, but they didn't reply.
In Mark's case, the reviewers hadn't detected a medical issue, and had separately discovered a video from six months prior, but they had been taught about instances where photos might have been taken for medical reasons.
Mark told The Times that if only we slept with pajamas on, this would not have happened.
The company stood by its decision to suspend Mark's account, according to a spokesman.
More than 620,000 reports were made to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and more than 270,000 accounts were disabled due to child sexual abuse content. Mark's son was one of 4,200 potential new child victims.
The company is committed to preventing the spread of child sexual abuse material on their platforms.
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