Hunting the Online Sex Predators isn’t nearly as grim as the title suggests. While presenter James Blake (not to be confused with the musician James Blake) does delve into the horrific world of organised child abuse, his real target is the global tech industry, which has facilitated the distribution of illegal content.
The film also has the encouraging message that – from lawyers in New York to dedicated police units in the Philippines – smart, idealistic people are fighting for vulnerable children.
But this well-intentioned documentary has a significant flaw: it takes on too much by attempting to cover several entirely distinct issues at once. The result is a hodgepodge of information that suffers from a lack of focus.
Blake, an influencer and entrepreneur, begins by interviewing a young man in Northern Ireland who was blackmailed after being manipulated into sending intimate images of himself. But the presenter has only just started addressing the pressures exerted on young people to share explicit pictures when he shifts to the very different question of social media algorithms and how they have been weaponised to feed young men toxic and misogynistic content.
Next, the documentary swerves into the disturbing topic of sex abuse in the Philippines and a culture of silence among families that allows such crimes to be committed with impunity. These are all urgent subjects, but a 50-minute run-time is too short to do them all justice.
As a result, Hunting the Online Sex Predators feels rushed – and isn’t helped by a desperate attempt to appeal to a youth audience. The soundtrack bombards the viewer with Troye Sivan and Fontaines DC while Blake explains that he is trying to contact Meta whistleblower Arturo Bejar by declaring, “I’m messaging this Arturo guy”. A 31-year-old really should know better than attempting to sound like a 14-year-old YouTuber who has just discovered Fortnite.
Still, despite the rushed approach and the cringeworthy banter, the film does an adequate job of exposing the cynicism and hypocrisy of the tech industry when it comes to safeguarding younger users from harmful content.
“Tech giants are brazenly rowing back on responsibility,” says Blake, his message underlined by footage of Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg announcing that the company is drastically reducing its policing of inappropriate content. In Donald Trump’s brave new world, cyberspace is more of a Wild West than ever.
That point is chillingly underscored again when Blake meets teenagers who reveal that inappropriate content routinely appears on their social media feeds. “You can report it, but the video definitely won’t be taken off,” says one. “It won’t be taken seriously enough.”
The tech giants facilitate the distribution of dangerous content “because it keeps your attention”, explains Dr Kaitlyn Regehr from University College London, an expert on the impact of social media on young people. “Extreme content is just more interesting,” she says. “Misinformation is more interesting than truth.”
Blake travels to the United States, where he meets lawyers waging a daily fight against tech companies to remove unsuitable content. One lawyer reveals that it’s easier to get big tech companies to remove videos featuring Taylor Swift songs than to take down clips of young kids that have been suggestively edited and reposted by anonymous creeps. In the US, it seems copyright law trumps the safety of children.
Then, it’s off to the Philippines, where we learn that one in 100 children were trafficked to produce sexual exploitation material in 2022. He accompanies officers from a child protection bureau on a raid of criminals suspected of organising live internet feeds of sex abuse. The stakes are high, and Blake looks terrified as he waits in a car, coming across almost relieved when it is revealed that the guilty party has fled.
Hunting the Online Sex Predators is a diligent attempt at covering a horrific subject – but would it have been asking too much to give Blake the time and space the issue deserves? This is a three-part documentary that has been squeezed into under a single hour, and it suffers as a result.
‘Hunting the Online Sex Predators’ is streaming on BBC iPlayer
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