Children Are Sacred. Stop Selling Their Exploitation.

Meta’s AI child-abuse ads expose a failure that advertisers, investors, and corporate leaders must confront.

By Veronica Sommer | Founder, Sacred Stewardship

A child’s photograph should never become raw material for sexual exploitation.

Yet an investigation by the Tech Transparency Project documented hundreds of paid Meta ads containing apparent child sexual abuse imagery, including AI manipulations of photographs of real children. San Francisco’s city attorney subsequently demanded that Meta stop the ads and explain its safeguards. www.techtransparencyproject.org

What what? Children’s images were being used to promote exploitation through a paid advertising system.

If we aren’t protecting children from being sexually exploited, what in the world are we doing?

This demands a response from every business leader who claims to care about children and families. The public deserves answers. Children deserve protection before the harm occurs.

Removing the ads does not answer how they got there

In his September 9 letter, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu requested explanations of Meta’s ad review, repeat-offender enforcement, and reporting to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The letter was a formal demand, not a court finding of liability. media.api.sf.gov

Meta told WIRED it removed the identified ads, prohibits this exploitation, and disputed the city’s jurisdiction. It also cited limited impressions and total spending below $5,000. www.wired.com

A small advertising bill does not make a child’s exploitation small. A limited audience does not make the violation acceptable.

Removing harmful material matters. But removal after exposure cannot be the full measure of child protection. We need answers about the advertisers, the review process, the linked services, the response to reports, and the measures taken to prevent the same abuse from returning.

A policy promising protection must be matched by a system that delivers it.

Follow the money - and the responsibility

Paid advertising has a chain of decisions behind it. Someone creates a campaign. Someone submits it. A platform reviews and distributes it. Payments change hands. Other businesses may benefit from the traffic.

Responsibility must be examined across that chain.

Legitimate advertisers are not automatically responsible for every harmful ad another business places. But they have purchasing power. They can demand evidence that the platforms receiving their money have effective safeguards against child exploitation.

What safeguards are you requiring? Who verifies them? What happens when they fail?

These questions belong in boardrooms, investment discussions, advertising contracts, and procurement decisions.

A company cannot credibly promote family values while refusing to examine the business practices its spending supports. An investor cannot claim to care about human flourishing while treating child protection as someone else’s concern.

“Zero tolerance” must mean prevention, accurate reporting, enforcement, and consequences.

We are building a campaign that puts a price on indifference

I have spent years building relationships across technology, cybersecurity, business, churches, and child protection. I am bringing those relationships together because I refuse to accept a marketplace where children’s exploitation becomes a recurring failure that everyone learns to live with.

Through Sacred Stewardship, we are developing a campaign to bring documented evidence to parents, churches, advertisers, investors, business leaders, and policymakers - and ask each to act within their own sphere of responsibility.

We are working to bring together survivor parents, legal advocates, privacy experts, and people who understand how advertising systems operate. Their knowledge and lived experience must help shape the demands we put before corporate leaders.

Our proposed advertiser-facing briefing, “When Advertising Infrastructure Funds Exploitation,” will examine the systems that enable harm, the safeguards that require scrutiny, and the decisions leaders can make to protect children.

We intend to make documented failures harder to ignore and meaningful action easier to take.

A child cannot protect herself from a system that turns her photograph into sexual abuse imagery. Adults with authority, resources, and purchasing power must step in.

The people who control the money have a responsibility to use that power.

Sacred Commerce: redirect the money, rebuild the culture

That is why we are building the Sacred Commerce Alliance: to connect people and organizations committed to protecting children, respecting privacy, strengthening families, and putting human dignity at the center of commerce.

Our spending has consequences. So do our advertising budgets, investments, partnerships, and recommendations. We have a responsibility to examine where that money goes and what it sustains.

For advertisers, that means demanding independently verifiable safeguards and clear consequences when platforms fail to protect children.

For investors, it means examining whether growth depends on practices that put vulnerable people at risk - and making child protection part of the investment decision.

For families and churches, it means choosing technologies and businesses worthy of their trust.

The Alliance must also help people identify credible alternatives. Those alternatives should earn confidence through evidence and conduct, rather than values-based marketing alone.

People over profits must show up in the decisions we make when protecting people costs us something.

We need shared standards, sustained pressure, and the willingness to redirect money when promises are not matched by action.

Redirect Commerce. Rebuild Culture.

Children are sacred. Our decisions must reflect it.

My faith will not allow me to read these reports, shake my head, and move on.

These are children made in the image of God. Their bodies, identities, and futures matter. AI does not diminish their dignity or excuse its violation.

“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” ~ Ephesians 5:11

Exposure carries a responsibility to respond: protect those at risk, support those harmed, pursue accountability, and change the conditions that allow exploitation to continue.

We need repentance wherever people have chosen profit over protection. We need care and restoration for those who have been harmed. We need businesses willing to earn trust through what they actually do.

If you lead a company, manage an advertising budget, advise investors, serve a church, or have expertise that can help protect children, there is work for you to do. I invite you to help build this campaign and the Sacred Commerce Alliance.

Children are not products. Their exploitation must never be someone else’s revenue opportunity. Protecting them must become a condition of doing business.

Sources and Reporting Credit

This Sacred Stewardship commentary builds on investigative reporting, research, and the city attorney’s letter:

• Matt Burgess at WIRED: “San Francisco Orders Meta to Stop ‘Allowing’ AI Child Abuse Ads”
• Tech Transparency Project: “Meta Ran Hundreds of Paid Ads with Child Sexual Abuse Imagery”
• San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu’s September 9, 2026 letter to Meta

A Sacred Stewardship Prayer

Lord, protect every child whose image or dignity has been violated. Bring harmful material to light and stop its spread. Give courage and wisdom to families, investigators, and those responsible for safeguarding children. Move leaders to act with truth, urgency, and accountability. Heal those who have been harmed, and teach us to honor every person as precious in Your sight. Amen.