What you didn’t know about Amazon, but wish you did.

Nope it’s not a set of bad eggs, but it’s not far off. The Dirty Dozen List has been happening since 2013 and is NCOSE’s genius way of calling out any mainstream companies that are making money from and normalizing sexual exploitation! So the list allows us to let you guys know what is going on with companies that you could be supporting, they could be promoting or have agreements that include pornography, sexual assault, sex trafficking or even showing incest in an erotic light(yuck!)! The name of the game for the list being made is: they are held accountable, and people push them for action!

Last year’s Dirty Dozen List was insane with what was brought to light! From Wyndham Hotels who were sued by NCOSE on behalf of a kid who was serially raped in the hotels to big wig Visa who partnered with pornography sites like Pornhub for processing payments – supporting porn with themes of racism, incest and violence etc. Tik Tok made the list too; yes, the app that nearly every elementary school kid is on! They had zero safety features which made the app a no brainer for abusers and traffickers to take advantage of.

Does naming and shaming them actually work? YES! Visa have since made the change and ended their partnership with Pornhub! It was first thanks to the Dirty Dozen List that thousands of people like you and me, read the list and then emailed them, voicing our disgust and urging them to end working with the porn site! The tipping point was thanks to brave survivors who told their stories in BBC World and New York Times! Another victory was with Tik Tok, who implemented safety features on their app within just a few weeks of being named and shamed on the list. Parents can now keep their safety features in place on the app and they even brought in a Family Paring mode which means parents can see their child’s accounts on another device! That’s only a taster of the victories, you can see more here!

Now the 2021 Dirty Dozen has been released and oh my goodness, I did not expect this!

Amazon made the list, this is HUGE. Think of the amount of people that order on it daily! It’s disgusting what I learned, Amazon is rife with sexual exploitation. Amazon sells child nudity + sex trafficking books, they are selling child dolls where they highlight the inclusion of PRIVATE PARTS and SOFT, LIFE-LIKE LIPS?

Along with incest themed porn, sexualised racism and to top it off their gaming platform Twitch is invested with harassment and grooming. Yet again we are faced with a platform with ZERO parental controls, which is INSANE to me! Theres also sexual harassment happening to women on it. A woman came forward about her harassment and a representative assured her that her story would be escalated to the CEO, fast forward a year later and the person she reported is still featured on Twitch!

Another one that made the list is Google’s Chromebook! For some bizarre reason they refuse to include safety controls on Chromebooks that countless SCHOOL CHILDREN were distributed and use EVERYDAY. Prior to lockdown, 40 million were using Chromebooks, think of how many are now using them in this virtual learning climate?! Instead of this trillion-dollar giant doing the right thing and implementing the safety controls, they leave it to the already stressed parents and teachers in the height of virtual learning. The reports of children being exposed to pornography and predators have been rolling in, a 9-year-old boy who was exposed to hundreds of porn sites via his school issued Chromebook. Resulting in him becoming withdrawn, angry, and anxious.

Another mother reported that her child found loopholes in her security protections.

Leading to the child talking to online predators and telling her how to set up fake credit cards and nearly getting ABDUCTED!!!

This is only the tip of the iceberg - there are 10 other huge companies that made the list! From Twitter, Netflix, Only Fans, Wish to Reddit. You never know what business you are plugging and supporting, you could be putting money into a world of sexual exploitation and trafficking. This is not to make anyone feel like I’m condemning them, it’s to think about the next time you go to buy something or get social online, you can use alternative means or even better, can you call them out in an email or on their own platforms. It all starts with just one ripple in the pond after all.

You can find the rest of the Dirty Dozen list over on NCOSE’s website, where they are constantly calling out and reminding companies of what they can do to change. They do applaud them for the changes they make, which I think is key in our change, we are all after good publicity aren’t we?