Apple Is Pressed by Fund Manager to Combat Child Sex Abuse in Videos
Shareholders and regulators have shown more interest in holding companies accountable for environmental and social claims
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
An Apple Inc. shareholder that has long chided the company for not doing enough to fight the spread of photos depicting sexual violence against young people is now upping pressure on the iPhone maker to crack down on videos too.
Money manager Jeff McCroy, who runs Christian Brothers Investment Services -- one of the oldest socially responsible investment firms -- has pressed Apple, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. over the last several years on efforts to more effectively block child pornography. Reports of videos containing child sexual abuse material surpassed flags for still images for the first time in 2019 and remained nearly half of the 65 million images identified last year, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
McCroy’s firm, which owned $271 million in Apple shares and debt as of Aug. 31, wrote to Apple last month in a letter that hasn’t previously been made public, encouraging it to take a tougher stance on videos.
“The technology sector as a whole has been slow to address this important issue,’’ McCroy said in an interview. Abusive imagery in videos has the potential to spread rapidly across the internet, so companies should share artificial intelligence technologies and other tools with one another to help address the issue, he said.