Computing professionals have developed a number of aphorisms over the decades. Do not roll your own cryptography; it is always DNS; time zones are hard; names are hard too. There is another rule that’s darker but no less true than these examples: Any feature of an online service that enables the creation, transmission, display, or storage of digital files will be used for child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Every year, online services find and remove tens of millions of pieces of CSAM, which the United Nations (UN) defines as “any representation, by whatever means, of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes.” (That original definition used the term “child pornography,” which is now disfavored because it implies consent and downplays the crime involved.) This is not just a problem for social-media and cloud-storage platforms, but also for services as disparate as genealogy, job search, and e-commerce. Anywhere a file can be uploaded is a potential vector for abuse.