February 17, 2025
Bloomberg Businessweek won the George Polk Award for Technology Reporting for its coverage of child safety in the digital world. The award is presented to Olivia Carville, a senior reporter on the Investigations team, and Cecilia D’Anastasio, a reporter covering the gaming industry. The winners of the George Polk Awards for 2024 were announced today by Long Island University.
“Unsafe Online,” a series of articles on child safety online, uncovered how “sextortion” scammers blackmailed teens via Instagram, how predators have used the Roblox gaming platform to groom and exploit children and how drug dealers sold fentanyl to kids using Snapchat. The reporting led to changes. Snap and Meta rolled out several new policies to fight financial sextortion — including deactivating more than 70,000 Instagram and Facebook accounts linked to sextortion scammers. Roblox also enacted new safety updates and enhanced the site’s parental controls for minors.
The full list of winners for the George Polk Awards for 2024 can be found here.
Stories from the reporting series can be found here:
Sextortion Scams on Social Media Are Driving Teens to Suicide
Roblox Is Struggling to Keep Pedophiles Off Its Gaming Platform
Fentanyl Almost Killed Michael Brewer. Now He Wants Snap to Pay
Meta Removes 63,000 Accounts Linked to Sextortion Scammers
Instagram Warns Teens with Talk About Sextortion Video
Roblox to Enact Child-Safety Changes Giving Parents More Control
Roblox Tumbles as Hindenburg Bets Against Gaming Platform
Roblox’s Predator Problem (video)