Major companies with big advertising campaigns, including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes and PBS Kids, have suspended advertising or partially pulled their ads from the social networking platform Twitter because their ads appeared next to posts related to with child pornography, as the companies told Reuters.
Companies from Walt Disney Co, NBC Universal, Coca-Cola Co, to a children's hospital were among more than 30 ads that appeared on Twitter account profiles, promoting online links to child pornography, according to a related Reuters investigation into profile accounts found as part of a new investigation into online child sexual abuse by cybersecurity group Ghost Data.
Some of the posts included keywords related to "rape" and "teenagers" and appeared alongside marketing posts from the companies' advertisers, a Reuters investigation found. For example, a promotional post from footwear and footwear accessories company Cole Haan appeared next to a post that one user said "promoted child and adolescent pornography."
"We're horrified," said David Maddox, head of product marketing at Cole Haan, when the company's ads were found to be appearing next to posts with the content described above. "Either Twitter will fix this or we will fix it by whatever means we can, including not buying advertising space from this social media platform," he warned.
Source: RES-EAP