Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow called on the Supreme Court to address whether social media platforms can avoid responsibility when child sex abuse material (CSAM) is shared online, demanding that big tech companies "protect kids over profit."
"It's one of the worst evils in the world," Tebow said Tuesday on "The Story with Martha MacCallum" when asked why he became interested in fighting child exploitation on social media.
"And really what we're talking about is the replaying and memorializing of people's worst days."
He pointed to a case up for consideration by the Supreme Court that alleges X, formerly known as Twitter, refused to take down CSAM despite multiple requests notifying the company of the explicit content.
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"With Doe versus Twitter, it's a 13 and 14-year-old boy that were sextorted in some of the worst ways. And then years later, it's getting replayed on Twitter over and over and over again. Over 100,000 people watched it and thousands shared it."
He said the family pleaded with X to take down the content, providing identification to prove they were who they said they were.
"And Twitter said, 'Sorry, there's nothing we can do about it. We're not going to take it down.' And the only reason it got taken down from Twitter is because HSI and the government got involved, and eventually they took it down, but now it's also being shared all over the internet."
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The case centers on Section 230 of the Communications Act, known as "protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material." The law states that online platforms are generally not treated as the "publisher or speaker" of information provided by another content provider and also gives protection for certain good-faith efforts to restrict access to objectionable material.
The legal battle asks whether that protection covers X in this case, after the company was allegedly contacted multiple times about the content in question.
Tebow called online child sexual exploitation an "epidemic."
The FBI received nearly 55,000 reports of crimes related to sextortion and extortion in 2024, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's (NCMEC) CyberTipline received 20.5 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation the same year.
"It is actually all of our jobs to protect the next generation. And if we just feel like, as a society, it's okay to look the other way, then we are putting kids in harm's way and their worst moments are being relived over and over and over again. And we can do better," said Tebow.
Fox News Digital reached out to X for comment but did not receive a response.
