Heat Initiative, launched in 2023, holds tech companies accountable for ignoring child sexual abuse on their devices and platforms. With a significant focus on Apple, Heat Initiative turns up the pressure on the global company for ignoring the child sexual abuse material stored and shared on its platform.
In 2024, our efforts were aimed at confronting one of the tech industry’s most urgent and least addressed crises: the circulation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Our goal for the year was to create work that aims to ensure greater online safety for children and teens – with the objective of broadening awareness of this issue amongst Apple’s top executives and Board of Directors, employees within the company, members of the press, and the broader public.
We sought to shift the public conversation around tech accountability, unite survivors and advocates in a powerful coalition, and keep pressure on Apple’s decision-makers through sustained, high-visibility actions. Different actions would be aimed at different audiences, to create a 360 degree awareness play and ensure that no audience was left in the dark.
Success would be measured not only by quantifiable reach and awareness, but also by the degree to which our message reached the desks of Apple’s most influential leaders and the employees who could drive internal change.
We approached 2024’s campaign work with a mix of creative disruption, precise targeting, and relentless visibility. Our strategy rested on three pillars: evolve our tactics to bring in new allies and reach new audiences, escalate pressure on Apple leadership with bold public actions, and optimize our efforts to sustain momentum over time in order to achieve our objectives.
With the objective of increasing awareness and attention on this issue, our team produced televised PSAs, public protests, creative and cultural stunts, and pointed social media assets designed to reach our target audiences. Each of these executions was aimed at broadening awareness of this issue.
We started the year with a television ad titled “Rotten,” which aired during the NFC (National Football Conference) finals and used a simple but unforgettable image - a rotting apple in a child’s hand - to symbolize Apple’s neglect. Later on in the year, when Apple’s own iPad “Crush” ad drew widespread criticism, we responded with “Don’t Crush Childhood,” a spoof replacing creative tools with children’s toys to underscore what’s at stake when tech companies ignore the safety of children. These films used compelling and unforgettable imagery to draw the eye of the viewer, making the message impossible to ignore and encouraging more and more audiences to understand what’s at stake when public safety measures aren’t taken.
We took bold action in real life, too. Our public actions met Apple at its most visible cultural moments. During the Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, we staged a protest at Apple Park with survivors and allies, confronting the company in full view of employees, stakeholders, and media, directly exposing Craig Federighi through a cheeky blimp. At the iPhone 16 launch events in New York City, we organized visually compelling stunts, with posters displaying the words “new phone, same dangers for kids” for all to see - including Tim Cook. In December, we united advocacy groups and parents of victims for a powerful Grand Central Station demonstration - in front of the Apple Store - during the holiday shopping rush. We had one simple wish “Dear Santa Tim Cook, All we want is safer devices for our kids. Love, Parents.” But we didn’t stop there, we decided to make waves on Tim Cook’s home turf, we joined “A-Day” at Cook’s alma mater, Auburn University, with a blimp-sized inflatable of Cook himself, holding a bag of money in one hand and an iPhone displaying the words “profits over kids” in the other.
Social media was an important component of this campaign as well, used as a rallying point for amplification. Our major PSAs were shared by survivors, movement leaders and influencers. We also used social content as a chance to share pointed, campaign-oriented messages during “celebratory” moments for Apple. Finally, we used LinkedIn as a place to reach Apple employees through precise targeting, looking for allies and insider information and reminding them that we know public safety is at risk, and they’re the ones who can do something about it.
During 2024, Heat Initiative’s campaigns achieved a combined reach of more than 3.85 million across its major moments, with the “Rotten” ad drawing approximately 2.8 million views and “Don’t Crush Childhood” reaching over 1.7 million people. Influencer amplification was the main driver of this quantitative impact, as survivors, advocacy leaders, and public safety voices - some with audiences in the hundreds of thousands - shared our content across platforms.
The Heat Initiative’s 2024 campaign made it impossible for Apple to ignore the issue. By combining survivor testimony, creative protest, and precise targeting, we reframed child safety as a non-negotiable corporate responsibility and created a roadmap for holding powerful tech companies accountable.
Tying our message to Apple’s own high-profile events ensured consistent media attention and placed child safety at the center of the tech industry conversation - not to mention, we were able to get the attention of Tim Cook himself at the iPhone 16 launch last year.
Most notably, in June, Apple announced that it was taking measures to expand tools to help parents protect kids and teens online, including new ways to manage Child Accounts, the ability to share a child’s age range to receive age-appropriate experiences within an app, updated age ratings on the App Store and more.
In short, our strategy of creating impossible-to-miss stunts, and content, throughout 2024 broadened public awareness to a point where Apple needed to respond, and did so, by increasing safety measures to make projects safer for children.
