The new recruitment of children and young people to gangs has largely moved to social media, according to the police. There, recruiters advertise murder assignments and often promise large sums of money to those who take on the "job".
Today, the police can ask the platforms, such as Tiktok and Instagram, to remove the ads. But it's based on voluntary cooperation. And even though the companies have become better at collaborating, the national police chief believes that new, mandatory rules are needed.
We can force them if it's about terrorist content or internet-related sexual offenses. Then they should take it down within an hour and we can fine them. There's nothing like that here, says Petra Lundh.
Wants to get aliases
She also wants the platforms to be required to share information such as an alias behind a murder ad, something that according to her does not happen to a great extent today.
It can get significantly better. There's information in this that they pick up as we would like to have in order to be able to put together a puzzle and see if we can get to the one who instigates the crime, says Lundh.
Last year, 520 children and young people were suspected in murder investigations, according to the police. 400 were between 15 and 17 years old, and 120 were children who are not criminally liable.
Needs to improve
Fredrik Timell from Tiktok emphasizes that Tiktok usually removes content when the police ask them. He also points out that the police already have the opportunity to contact the companies to request more information about illegal content.
In 2024, we assisted Swedish authorities in 208 such cases, says Timell in connection with a seminar in the parliament.
He admits at the same time that there are things left to do.
We need to work diligently to improve both our automated systems and further educate our moderators, says Timell.
