Block Joins Tech Coalition’s Lantern, the Child Safety Cross-Platform Sharing Program

We are excited to join Lantern, The Tech Coalition’s first child safety cross-platform signal sharing program. Founded in 2023 and comprised of 21 companies – including Google, Meta, Snap, and Microsoft – Lantern is now including select financial institutions to evaluate whether signal sharing can help disrupt the financial incentives associated with online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA). Western Union and Block are the first two companies to join the financial sector pilot for this effort.

Illicit activity like OCSEA often manifests across multiple platforms, which prevents individual companies from seeing and solving the problem alone. Lantern allows technology companies to securely share information, or “signals,” about activity and accounts that violate their policies against OCSEA. The companies with access to these signals can use them to better understand and investigate activity on their platforms and use them to uncover threats, sometimes even in real time. Bringing financial institutions into this project could extend Lantern’s impact and lead to further progress in the collective effort to prevent and disrupt OCSEA.

Companies, law enforcement, and other organizations need to work together to uncover the full picture of potential OCSEA and other problematic activity and take proper action. As a member of Lantern, Block will receive signals available from the project and ingest this information within our specialized investigations teams, which can take action to disrupt bad activity and report to law enforcement as appropriate. Additionally, the signals will allow us to assess where we can enhance product or risk controls and further prevent this type of activity on our platforms.

“We are thrilled to join Lantern and double down on our ongoing commitment to prevent and remove online child sexual exploitation and abuse from our platforms,” said Megan Gonzales, Global Head of Financial Crimes for Cash App. “We take our responsibility as a financial service provider extremely seriously, and partnerships like Lantern have the potential to further improve collaboration, develop industry best practices, and increase protection for our customers and their families.”

“Criminals often use multiple platforms, including online payment platforms, to execute financially motivated online child sexual exploitation and abuse,” said Sean Litton, Tech Coalition President and CEO. “We hope to disrupt the financial incentives associated with this crime by sharing signals with financial institutions in Lantern, and are grateful to Block for its participation in this pilot.”

Signals shared in Lantern have produced tangible outcomes and are helping to protect children from cross-platform abuses. These outcomes are in addition to the actions taken by individual companies to enforce their own child safety policies to prevent and disrupt OCSEA.