MP critical after BBC sends evidence to Facebook, which at first removes only 18% – and reports corporation to police

“Grave doubts” have emerged about the effectiveness of Facebook’s moderation system after an investigation revealed the social network was failing to remove sexualised images of children even after they were reported.

Damian Collins, chair of the culture, media and sport committee, made the comments as he criticised Facebook’s handling of the images, dozens of which were reported to the company by the BBC and fewer than 20% were removed.

After the BBC sent evidence of the photos to Facebook, the social media company reported the BBC to the police for distributing the images, which had been shared on private Facebook groups intended for paedophiles.

“I find it very disturbing. I find that content unacceptable,” Collins said. “I think it raises the question of how can users make effective complaints to Facebook about content that is disturbing, shouldn’t be on the site, and have confidence that that will be acted upon.”

Collins said the decision of Facebook to report the BBC to the police was “extraordinary – because you’re trying to help them clean up their network, from material that shouldn’t be there”.

Testing Facebook’s reporting system, the BBC reported 100 items that included groups specifically aimed at men with an interest in child sex abuse images and stolen images of real children with obscene comments posted beneath them.

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One image Facebook initially said did not breach community standards appeared to be a still from a video of child abuse, the BBC reported. Just 18 were initially removed out of the 100 reported.

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, told the BBC: “The moderation clearly isn’t being effective, I would question whether humans are moderating this, are looking at this, and also I think it is failing to take account of the context of these images.”

Facebook said it had “carefully reviewed the content referred to us and have now removed all items that were illegal or against our standards”.

It said it had followed “our industry’s standard practice and reported them to Ceop [Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre]” when the BBC had sent the images. “It is against the law for anyone to distribute images of child exploitation. We also reported the child exploitation images that had been shared on our own platform. This matter is now in the hands of the authorities.”