With an increasing number of children having been sexually assaulted through the use of social media, police are set to send messages and issue warnings directly to people who post inappropriate messages on Twitter, the National Police Agency said.
The NPA on Jan. 7 sent a notice to prefectural police headquarters across the nation, instructing them to take certain steps aimed at preventing sex crimes such as child prostitution and child pornography.
Efforts of this kind, which have been introduced by police in Tokyo and 12 prefectures, are expected to spread nationwide, sources said.
Police are expected to issue warnings by replying directly to messages that may lead to sexual abuse of minors such as those on Twitter that demand indecent behavior.
Messages are to be sent directly from an official police account to remind those who have tweeted inappropriate messages that they are being watched.
Although Twitter has banned the use of its platform by people under the age of 13, children are still at risk because they can set up their accounts anonymously and do not have to verify their age.
One hashtag used on Twitter is #enko, written in Japanese, and there are also many posts by children suggesting compensated dating, such as, "Is there a sugar daddy available?" Enko is an abbreviation of the term "enjo kosai," meaning compensated dating.
For those posts, police are to reply by writing, "Your post may lead to child prostitution," adding, "Meeting strangers is a very dangerous act that can lead to serious incidents."
The police are also planning to reply to adults who try to approach children to pay them for dates, writing, "Child prostitution and the production of child pornography are extremely vicious acts that seriously violate the human rights of children." They will also attach an image of a police poster to raise awareness of the issue.
When police have found inappropriate posts in the past, they have contacted the people who wrote the tweets and met them in person to reprimand them. But they have often lost contact with these people, they said.
The notice also called for the introduction of a system in which each police headquarters would ask university student volunteers to help monitor online content and report inappropriate posts to police.
In October 2018, the Aichi prefectural police became the first in the nation to initiate an effort of this kind. As of the end of October last year, the prefectural police had replied to about 1,680 posts. Later, many were deleted, with one of the user accounts displaying the text, "Sorry, this post was deleted."
According to the NPA, 1,811 people under the age of 18 were involved in crimes through social media in 2018.
By type of offense, violations of the law on child prostitution and child pornography were the largest at 944 cases, with Twitter cited as the most common social media platform used for such crimes at 718 cases or 39.6%.
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