Gauteng High Court orders Meta to shut child porn accounts targeting SA learners
The Gauteng High Court ordered Meta to shut Instagram and WhatsApp accounts sharing explicit child pornography involving learners.
The Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg has ordered tech giant Meta to shut down anonymous Instagram accounts and WhatsApp channels distributing explicit child pornography involving South African learners.
According to The Witness, Judge Mudunwazi Makamu granted the order yesterday after an urgent application by the Digital Law Company, directed by social media law expert Emma Sadlier.
Makamu agreed with advocate Ben Winks’s arguments that children were being victimised through the distribution of explicit material.
Makamu ordered Meta to permanently shut down all linked accounts and channels and to ‘disable the creator of the WhatsApp channels and Instagram profiles listed… from creating any further WhatsApp channels and Instagram profiles’.
The company must also provide Digital Law Company with ‘all information’ in its possession about the creators.
“The respondents shall, before 12:00 on July 15, furnish to the applicant all information in the first respondent’s possession pertaining to the creator(s) of the WhatsApp channels and Instagram profiles.”
Sadlier confirmed that The Digital Law Company obtained a High Court order against Meta to shut down certain anonymous Instagram accounts and WhatsApp Channels distributing child pornography.
Urgent action to protect children
Sadlier confirmed the High Court order against Meta, describing it as crucial for protecting children from online exploitation.
“We count our lucky stars to be able to work with such extraordinary legal minds who understand how important it is to protect our children in this damn crazy world,” she said.
The signed order will be sent to the registrar this morning, she told The Citizen.
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Shocking revelations in court papers
In court papers, Sadlier said pornographic material was sourced from the community via an anonymous uploading service called NGL (Not Gonna Lie).
She explained that the person behind the Instagram profiles and WhatsApp channels appeared to be the same individual using similar aliases and uploading intimate content received from others.
“It goes without saying that the uploading and distribution of this content is a crime, a flagrant disregard of the law and an egregious violation of constitutional rights, including… the rights to dignity, privacy, the best interests of a child and psychological integrity,” she said.
The channels reportedly included explicit images and videos of South African learners, some filmed in school bathrooms.
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Meta’s alleged failure to act
Sadlier alleged that while Meta administrators occasionally deleted pages or channels, these were often reinstated or replicated soon after, allowing the illegal content to circulate again.
Yesterday, Digital Law Company launched urgent legal action, saying a WhatsApp channel with over 11 000 followers – mostly children – had threatened to publish ‘everything’ that evening.
In a letter to Meta, the company’s attorney, Rupert Candy, warned: “If you do not ensure the deletion of the WhatsApp channels and Instagram profiles before then, the lives of numerous South African children will be irreparably harmed, with potentially suicidal consequences.”
Sadlier said investigations revealed the person behind the profiles was soliciting sexual content from learners and distributing it to large audiences on WhatsApp community channels and Instagram profiles.
“The affected individuals face the imminent and irreparable dissemination of their most sensitive and intimate information,” she said.
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