I’ve been working on this story for two months. It is extremely disturbing, but important.

Bottom line: Russian authoritarianism has created a serious gap in global efforts to combat the sexual exploitation of children.

That gap is called Yandex.

1/10 https://fortune.com/2020/01/17/yandex-russia-search-engine-child-exploitation-sexual-imagery/

Most major technology platforms rely on a shared database maintained by a nonprofit to block sexual images of children. These images have proliferated on the clearweb in a soul-crushing way, but it is a problem that major internet companies HAVE combated head-on. 2/10

But Vladimir Putin doesn’t like international nonprofits. And he doesn’t like the West’s vision of the Internet. So his government appears to have prevented Yandex from joining this effort.

3/10

According to experts, that has turned Yandex into a sort of training ground for pedophiles who aren’t tech-savvy enough to navigate the dark web.

On Google or Bing, a search for terms associated with child exploitation returns warnings. On Yandex, it returns results.

4/10

Those results include sexual images of children. They also include links to forums where pedophiles can learn how to hide from law enforcement.

By spreading this information, Yandex is helping normalize child exploitation by creating the impression that it is widespread.

5/10

It is also helping to create a market for commercialized child exploitation, a growing trend enabled by the darkweb and cryptocurrency.

6/10

The creeping normalization of pedophilia impacts every society on Earth. But many victims of commercial child exploitation are in unstable and impoverished places including sub-Saharan Africa.

7/10

Many victims are also in Russia itself. The same Kremlin policies that have prevented Yandex from joining global efforts to fight child exploitation have made human trafficking – of both children and adult women – rampant in Russia.

8/10

NGOs focused on helping vulnerable people have been ruthlessly suppressed, along with the rest of civil society, ultimately in service of one man’s avarice.

9/10 https://fortune.com/2017/07/29/vladimir-putin-russia-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-worlds-richest-man/

These are terrible facts. But these facts teach us something even bigger.

We live in a world of rising authoritarianism. Its consequences are not limited by borders. Those living in unfree societies pay the highest price.

But none of us is free when any are in chains.