Nonprofit fights to take down explicit leaked images and videos

They say the internet is forever, but one organization is trying to fight that.

A nonprofit called the Organization for Pornography and Sexual Exploitation Survivors (or PAPS) has had around 67,000 images and videos taken down over the past six years, it recently told Kyodo News.

The group asked website operators and providers to delete a total of 99,266 sexually explicit photos and videos between fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2024.

Of those, 59,653 have been completely deleted from the internet, while 7,577 have been deleted from some of the sites where they were posted.

As of May this year, a total of 30,625 remained online, as some site operators did not respond to takedown requests, the group said.

It’s a mixture of bravery on the part of victims, since even the process of requesting immage removal is traumatic, and perseverance on the group’s part — and technology. The organization has developed its own system with artificial intelligence to identify images or videos matching the victim’s features. This allows the organization to see if a file has been posted to multiple websites (which tends to happen with sex tapes and so on — they just spread and spread once posted).

Apparently the AI can also confirm if the file was deleted or not.

In the past, the release or failure to maintain data from past adult productions has sparked controversy, with performers like Kaho Shibuya suing over leaks. The 2022 porn law prohibits the release of porn content without the performers’ permission.

As you might expect, the majority of the content the Organization for Pornography and Sexual Exploitation Survivors deals with involves performers in porn that was initially uploaded and released on a single members-only website, but then leaked to others. This is probably not the mainstream adult video you find on Fanza but content that is marketed as “amateur” sex tapes, though is entirely staged. The women may be hostesses, sex workers, and so on earning a side income through occasional appearances, hoping the video stays on the one site.

But some of the requests related to revenge pornography and sextortion as well as deepfake porn, which use AI to create the likeness of someone for porn content. AI-generated porn is developing in Japan, though it risks breaking the obscenity law and can lead to the arrests of creators.

PAPS was established in 2009 to support sexual exploitation and digital sexual violence, and has seen the number of new consultations rise significantly in recent years (up to 1,867 in 2023). It has multilingual staff who speak Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, French, and Malay.

PAPS also sees the problem of sexual exploitation as running deeper than videos leaked and shared without consent.

The culture of “sex can be bought” is pervasive in Japanese society. [. . .] If everyone stops “buying sex” from today, we can end sexual exploitation in an instant. The root cause of sexual exploitation is the demand to “buy sex.” If we just stop buying sex, we can solve the problem of sexual exploitation from that day on.