July 07, 2025

349 – Legislative Reform in the Fight Against Online Exploitation

35 minutes

Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to discuss the critical need for legislative reform to combat online sexual exploitation, focusing on Section 230 immunity and emerging laws like the Take It Down Act.

Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan

Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan is director of public policy at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in Washington DC. She has been an advocate for stronger laws to fight sexual exploitation and has had a role in passing key anti-trafficking laws like the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act and SESTA-FOSTA, which changed Section 230 to hold tech platforms more accountable for their role in enabling sex trafficking.

Key Points

Human trafficking was only identified as a crime in the year 2000 with the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, making it a relatively new field where small movements have achieved significant progress.

Eleanor witnessed firsthand in Romania how young women were lured abroad with false promises of legitimate work, only to be trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation, highlighting the critical need for proper victim services rather than detention centers.

The Take It Down Act represents a crucial breakthrough by criminalizing the uploading of non-consensual sexually explicit material for the first time and requiring platforms to provide real human help desks for removal requests within 48 hours.

Image-based sexual abuse creates ongoing trauma for victims because unlike other trafficking incidents that end, having images online means “you’re being raped and it’s online and you can’t get it down,” creating continuous retraumatization.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996 when the internet was nascent, provides broad immunity to internet service providers and has been interpreted by courts as creating a “wall of immunity” for social media platforms.

The case against Twitter involving 13-year-old boys demonstrates how platforms monetize child exploitation material through advertising revenue while claiming Section 230 immunity protects them from liability.

California’s Age Appropriate Design Code represents one approach to reform by requiring companies to test products for age appropriateness before launch, using product liability law to sidestep Section 230 immunity issues.

Meta tracks children’s negative emotions and targets vulnerable youth with harmful content, including targeting kids who fear being “too fat” with eating disorder material, showing the deliberate exploitation of minors.

Bipartisan support exists for reform, with both Democratic and Republican senators preparing to introduce a bill to repeal Section 230, recognizing that tech companies are not policing themselves effectively.

The Social Media Victims Law Center currently represents over 4,000 families whose children have been harmed or killed due to social media platform irresponsibility enabled by Section 230 immunity.

Congressional education on online harms has accelerated with over 24 briefings since 2019, positioning the current Congress as potentially the most informed ever on these issues.

Federal guidance on best practices remains insufficient, with some jurisdictions like San Diego developing excellent collaborative models while others lack functional systems for moving victims into services.

Resources

Social Media Victims Law Center – Social Media Litigation Lawyers

Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media

CDA230

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast, brought to you by Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. I’m Dr. Sandie Morgan, and this is a show where we equip you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in the fight to end human trafficking right where you are.

[00:00:23] Today, I’m honored to welcome Dr. Eleanor Gaetan to the show. She’s director of. Public policy at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation that’s in Washington DC. She has been an advocate for stronger laws to fight sexual exploitation and has had a role in passing key anti-trafficking laws. Like the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act and Cesta Fossa, which changed Section 230 to hold tech platforms more accountable for their role in enabling sex trafficking.

[00:01:07] sandie: Eleanor, we have been in the same movement for decades, and it is exciting to see how some of our long held dreams have come to fruition.

[00:01:21] And one of mine has been to have you on this podcast.

[00:01:24] 349-guest: Oh, professor Morgan, thank you so much. It’s really a delight to join the coast. I’m speaking to you from Washington DC I know you’re there in California, and we together embrace all the advocates in between.

[00:01:36] 349-sandie: Well, and for our listeners who have been long time subscribers, my former podcast intern, I Dallas.

[00:01:46] she’s working with Dr. Gataen. So I, it was like full circle, the both coasts, all of us hands held together in this work. It is hard work. It takes dedication and long-term determination. Some people might even say we’re a bit stubborn.

[00:02:09] Dr. Gaetan: Certainly stubborn have to be persistent and stubborn. But the great thing about the field of human trafficking and the, you know, this was only identified as a crime in the year 2000. So let’s recall that, that, that there wasn’t a name for human trafficking. until 22, the year 2000, and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

[00:02:27] So it’s a relatively new field and yet the advance, the progress has been as a result of human champions and a few, you know, it’s a small movement that has mountains.

[00:02:42] Sandie: and you were instrumental in passing the first Trafficking Victims Protection Act here in the us. Tell me about that.

[00:02:51] guest: So I worked for U-S-A-I-D in Romania, and Romania was an example of a country where when the. When communism ended in 1989, 1990, people had been trapped in their countries. People were desperate to travel, and they lost a lot of jobs, and so people really needed work and they were seeking work abroad.

[00:03:11] So young women were especially vulnerable to those promises of a babysitting job or a waitressing job, or an elder care job. Around Western Europe and around the world. and so vulnerable to the, the promises of traffickers. So we witnessed in Romania and Moldova entire villages of young women being being lured abroad, and so many of them abused badly in both legal brothels and illegal prostitution around, around the world.

[00:03:39] I mean, the US government was supporting a, a trafficking shelter in Romania and Bucharest that I was helping to manage as a democracy officer. And it was shocking to me that it wasn’t, it wasn’t a, a shelter, it was a detention center. So women were being abused in, say, legal brothels in Germany were arrested, repatriated to their home country.

[00:04:01] There’s 20 years old, they come back with nothing and then they’re put in virtually like a prison cell and told they’re supposed to stay in this shelter, but it’s a detention center. And of course they ran away. So I was witnessing the lack, complete lack of services to help people who had been traumatized at a young age in the sex trade, in the commercial sex trade around the world.

[00:04:23] Sandie: Wow. And I was in Athens, Greece at ...

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