The terrifying online community targeting kids

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:10Coming up on The Daily, the online networks targeting your children. The disturbing twist, many of those behind it, are kids themselves.

0:23I'll admit it, the internet terrifies me, not least as I have a 10-year-old boy. He doesn't get online unless I'm sitting right there next to him. But that's not going to last forever, is it? And once they're out of sight, what our children can stumble into or perhaps be pulled towards can be far darker, far more dangerous than I ever realised. We found a lot of razor blades, pocket knives, kitchen knives, hidden away in little boxes. This isn't about what children see online. It's about what they're being encouraged to do by a group known as The Comm, who themselves are often kids. He said, I just thought it was like playing a PC game.

1:02I just thought I was playing around online. I didn't realise this was in the real world and would get me into so much trouble. Now, whilst the calm exists in the shadows, these harms are often taking place in plain sight. That's why parents and campaigners say regulators have been too slow to respond. Ofcom, as the regulator, has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to these threats. It has been timid. It has failed to graph that it understand the threats. So who are the calm? Why are children being targeted by other children? And is the system designed to protect him enough to stop my son from being targeted?

1:43A warning, this episode will contain reference to suicide, self-harm, grooming and sexual abuse. Skazadelle Robinson has been leading our investigation.

1:56Adele, just explain, what exactly is The Comm? Well, The Comm is short for community and it's basically a loose network. It's often called an ecosystem of online groups of mainly children and young adults aged between 11 and 25 years old, targeting the most vulnerable, mostly children around the world. It's associated with the most extreme forms of abuse, including child sexual abuse and exploitation, suicide encouragement and self-harm, animal abuse, graphic violence, hate speech, terrorism. And it's sort of also loosely divided into three. The sadism comm, as it's known by experts, the terror comm and the finance comm.

2:45What do we know about these subgroups within the comm? It's messy. It's chaotic. You'll have children and young adults who associate themselves with the ideology of Satanism, for example, or far-right extremism. And then other parts who will be involved in child sexual abuse and exploitation, sextortion. And then other parts which see that as a red line. And then you'll have a few around who are interconnected. And that includes the finance calm. These are, again, young people, children who are targeting big multinational companies and extorting them. So this is for financial motivation. But with regards to the ideologies across all of them, what they're doing and what they're talking about, it's all about what has been called clout, social clout, giving themselves a one-upmanship on each other, that sense of control and power.

3:40And they're sort of appropriating imagery and videos and language from Satanism is one example, and then using that within these groups to communicate with each other and with their victims. it's often performative. They don't necessarily believe there probably are some who do, but mostly it's performative. It's because it's shocking. It strikes me the one thing that unites these groups is the abuse of often vulnerable individuals. Is that what this is all about? That is exactly what this is about. On the extreme end, what we are seeing is the most vulnerable children and young adults being targeted.

4:20And they are choosing specifically to go after and exploit these children by going into self-help groups for eating disorders, going into self-help groups and forums for suicidal ideation or self-harm. And also, they're even going as far as to create fake support groups, for example, for neurodiversity and also for LGBTQ plus groups as well. So anything that would mean that you have any extra vulnerability, whether that's around identity, gender, a sense of sort of social isolation, the kind of bullying, and that's on both sides. It's really important to say this, that sometimes, and we don't know the extent to this, But it does appear to be very much a blurred line between offender and victim.

5:12Victims may become offenders and then offenders turn back to victims, an almost circle. And because of their such young age, that is, of course, causing and raising some very challenging questions for law enforcement. What are these groups asking the victims to do? What have you seen? There's a pivotal moment, if you like, of that kind of well-known, unfortunately, method of sextortion. That's one of the key moments where victims become under the control of someone within these groups. They're able to extort a picture of them, either it's self-harm or it's sexual abuse. And they are able to use that as an almost way to blackmail.

5:53There's another pathway. And this is sort of extreme desensitization. They bombard these children with extreme images, things that you and I may never have seen. Anything from child sexual abuse and self-harm and shooting videos. The most extreme form of content, gore, is a big thing. Children who are potentially interested in horror movies, something as simple as that. What is the point of that desensitisation? They are normalising it for very vulnerable children and young people. And the aim really is so that they become part of this ecosystem where this is just what they do and that's just accepted.

6:37And then there's expectations that come after this desensitization. If you're so used to seeing such extreme content, you're probably less likely to think that perhaps it's not right to then be part of that extreme content. And then in the end goal is to get that child to start creating their own extreme content. They're being groomed effectively, but in the most extreme way. What have we seen over the course of your investigation? So I can read out a few examples. I've got a couple in front of me here now. There's a chat about getting little girls into my DMs, my direct messages. They're then going on to talk about self-harm.

7:16They want to get little girls to start to self-harm. They're using language like, I'll be considered an urban legend. It's all about a show and status. That's the kind of language you're getting within these groups. The more extreme it gets, the better it is. Also on that, they have within these groups what's known as rosters. So the worse that you can do, you can eventually get your name onto this roster. What, like a leaderboard? What, a hall of fame? Yeah. And this brings me to the sort of point system that they have within some of these groups. So there's something I'm looking at here, which sort of crosses over from the online to the real world.

7:59To join this particular group, the requirements are self-harm, getting someone to take their own life. And then further down, it's three brickings, two arsons, three tyre slashings, two graffitis, two beatings, one stabbing. And they are promoting themselves and quite blatantly talking about this on the open web, saying here, still recruiting, direct message me, recruiting right now. And this is what you can do to be part of this particular group. and we've seen videos of this as well and they will often do live streaming of these acts. You can see how it starts off as quite low level and then progressively they're almost egging each other on and they're all in these group videos.

8:51There's something known as swatting that's happening in the US a lot among these groups which is where you call in and they'll record themselves on their screens doing this, fake bomb threats, fake shooters to an address, a school, hospital, even their victims, they'll use that as a way to intimidate them to get an armed police response to this address. It's intimidating for that person, for the community, and it's obviously wasting police time as well. Just looking at the situation globally, what acts of violence or abuse have been attributed to members of the comm? Well, the report that we've been given exclusively by Resolver, the risk intelligence firm, goes into this in a bit more detail.

9:35If you're looking at the worst end here, there have been members of the comm who have been connected to mass casualty plots. The Lady Gaga concert plot in Brazil was one of them. There was just a plot to injure people at the Lady Gaga concert, but it was intercepted. It didn't happen. And then there was a New York poisoning plot as well that was connected to these networks. There's a lot of interest within these groups in some parts about school shootings. That is the very, very, very extreme end. But then you've got those layers down, which are awful, where they'll be asking people to go out and murder a homeless person or go and beat someone up or go and stab someone.

10:17And then the level down might be, you know, in terms of real world violence, of course, you've got the child sexual abuse extortion and you've got the self-harm and trying to encourage children to take their own lives. That's a big thing among a lot of these groups. And then that layer down is sort of tire slashing and brickings and arson. And then further down from that, sort of cyberbullying and what they call doxing. They'll get all the information about a particular victim and they'll put that information online, their address, their family members. It's all in layers and steps that eventually, if you're in that kind of echo chamber, you can see how it does escalate.

10:56Adele, is there a pattern in the type of person being recruited by these groups? They are often boys, but not always, but mostly young boys or young men. They are experiencing isolation in their real life. there's not that sense of belonging. They may not have many, if any, friends. They will have had potentially adverse childhood experiences. There'll be mental health issues. There might be a prior history of self-harm. The victims who are picked off for their own vulnerabilities, those vulnerabilities are creating some kind of isolation. This report from Resolver is called Weaponising Loneliness, not because everyone who's lonely can be recruited in or become a victim, but because that loneliness is part of a vulnerability around it.

11:45And the comm themselves, bearing in mind it's a disparate group of subgroups with competing and often performative ideologies, where are they coordinating online? Where are they sharing their material? They're using all sites, like Roblox, for example. We spoke to someone a year ago. their daughter she believes was a victim of the comm she started playing on roblox you can speak to other people around the world on roblox she was told to then move on to another platform called discord which is a gaming platform and that this happened over time and then asked to go into a more private chat which is what you're able to do on some of these platforms i think at this point it's important to say that we have actually reached out to roblox and discord but they haven't as of this recording, got back to us with a response.

12:35But it's also Telegram, a social media messaging platform, basically, and it offers sort of end-to-end encryption. So it's difficult, if almost impossible, for law enforcement to be able to see those private conversations, to get into those groups. We have actually heard from Telegram, who have told Sky News that the platform has continually removed groups associated with Calm since they were first identified and said that Telegram's terms of service explicitly forbid the acts com participates in. And then it also says that moderators empowered by custom AI tools proactively monitor public parts of the platform to remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day, including content associated with the com.

13:16I must say here that it is obvious when we've done our investigations that it is clear that these groups are being taken down. They're being deleted. There is action being taken. However, they're just popping up elsewhere. These groups are evolving all the time. And that's what makes it so difficult for law enforcement, not just in this country, but all over the world. In the course of your investigation, you've been speaking to the families of both those who've been the victims of the comm, but also those who've been involved in inflicting the harm. Yeah, I spoke to the mother of a member of the COM network here in the UK who was arrested and was connected to an offence of encouraging suicide.

13:59side. So a hideous act, anything to do with self-harm and encouraging someone to take their own lives. She finds it really difficult to marry up the person who was talking in the way that he was talking on these groups in his room with the person that she knows. She talks about someone who's chatty and a good sense of humor and good at cooking and loves fishing. And then on the other beside someone who was being connected to the most horrific groups. She talked very much about isolation for her son. She said that he was bullied at school. He used to self-harm, that he had no friends. He had extremely low self-esteem.

14:45He thought he wasn't worth anything. And he was someone who was in his room a lot. But it's very difficult, I think, for parents in those teenage years to know the difference between general teenage angst and moodiness and withdrawal and perhaps something more sinister going on. He said, I think it's important to say as well here, that he didn't think what he was doing was real. He thought it was part of a game. So when I asked him, what would you say to other parents? He said, just don't assume that your child is safe in their bedroom. Look out for sort of pulling away from activities and routines that they might already do.

15:26She said he had pets in the garden and he just suddenly wasn't really interested. He didn't want to go fishing anymore. Again, it's really hard, isn't it, Neil, to know what is just typical teenager behaviour and what is more sinister. What has really scared me as a parent, Adele, not just everything that you've said up until this point, but it's the real-world manifestations of the calm that kids are being encouraged to commit violent acts. And they are going out and they're getting the means, at least, to commit these violent acts. They are. I spoke to another mother in the United States. Her son was not a member of the COMM.

16:07She doesn't know whether or not he was on his way to becoming, but he was a victim first. And she talked and showed us sketchbooks. He'd drawn pictures of knives, of blades, of cleavers, self-harm imagery, quite extreme at times. And she then said that what had happened, this particular boy, he was only 13, he'd had his phone taken away from him at school because he kept going against the rule of not being on his phone. And so at that point, they went into his bedroom and they found lots of razor blades and pocket knives and folding knives that they'd never seen before and kitchen knives hidden away in little boxes.

16:52He was being groomed to self-harm. He was making content for somebody. Everything that was happening with him was very subtle on the outside. Clearly, it wasn't on the inside. It was only looking at these sketchbooks, the phone activity, the gaming, the withdrawal. She looked back in hindsight, in retrospect, and thinks, how did I not know? But again, had no idea about the threat of the comm. How prolific is this? I mean, how seriously are law enforcement having to take the comm? Extremely seriously, because of the levels of harm. We know that there are referrals coming into the UK every week about this.

17:35We know that in the US, we're talking thousands. Someone recently said to me within law enforcement that the figures that they have seen are alarming. So it's how fast it's growing. It's how it's evolving. It's the level of harms that are being committed that makes it something as a priority for law enforcement. What is happening, certainly in the UK, is they're bringing all of these expertise together to try to tackle this threat. But is that happening everywhere? I'm not sure. And even with that happening, we are still so set up, aren't we, to deal with these threats, I think, these crimes in silos.

18:11And I think that's what brings me on to the criticism that the Molly Rose Foundation Self-Harm and Suicide Prevention Charity has about the Online Safety Act in this country, particularly saying that it's too timid. And they've also said that, you know, we should be looking at changing that legislation, changing legislation to deal with this. There's also an argument for broadening out the definition of extremism. let's see what the politicians do but Adele you know as well as I there isn't a single parent listening to this who will be in any way reassured by the fact that it doesn't happen to all children what on earth can I do to stop my child going anywhere near this phenomenon it's a really really important question it's the reason why I wanted to do this story twice within a year and will continue to because I think first and foremost being aware of it is significant amongst parents.

19:11I do school runs, you do. No one knows about this. I think it's really hard to believe it. It sounds sensational. You don't want to read about these things, do you? We're also busy as parents. You don't want to read the article or watch the video that's going to tell you horrific things about children doing horrific things to other children. So I think knowing about it is the first thing I think the best thing we can do as parents is talk to our children and try and find out who they're talking to or limit who they're talking to but for many parents the cat's already out of the bag isn't it they're playing games online already so it's how do you do that I don't have the answer to that I would just say open conversations with your children and being aware of this threat is hopefully enough for at least some of us but again I'm no expert.

20:02Adele thanks very much indeed. Thanks. The UK online regulator Ofcom has responded to Adele's investigation. A spokesperson said nobody should be in any doubt about how seriously at Ofcom we are taking the protection of children. On com groups we've been engaging directly with major platforms. We've got a dedicated team that is dealing with small but risky services. If you've been affected by any of the topics we've discussed, details of how to contact the Samaritans are in the show notes. The Sky News Daily is back again tomorrow.