By Ethan Hamilton -
The ubiquitous use of social media has seen the rise of criminal offences being recorded and shared online. This convergence of the roles of criminal and online influencer has gained the title “crimefluencer” or “crimfluencer” and covers a broad spectrum of activities.
Associate Professor Xanthe Weston is a criminology researcher at CQUniversity and Co-Director of the Queensland Centre for Domestic and Family Violence Researcher.
Dr Weston says that unlike true-crime creators, who comment after the fact, crimefluencers are part of the crime cycle itself.
“They’re members of decentralised online crime networks who amplify crime content to build status and notoriety online, all for sadistic pleasure,” Dr Weston says.
“Within these networks, violence has become a form of social currency.”
Rather than being single organised crime groups, decentralised crime networks are a loose collection of individuals or small groups connected through shared interests and platforms.
Young, vulnerable people are recruited to film offences and post this content to platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, Telegram and Roblox.
Due to their weaker age verification systems and normalised online chat between strangers, the latter three sites are also commonly used for recruitment by the crime networks.
“Adolescent brains are wired for reward-seeking and peer approval, so young people prioritise social validation over long-term consequences,” Dr Weston says.
“Crimefluencers exploit exactly that — manufacturing the belonging, status, and dares that adolescents are most responsive to.”
“A young person who’s been coerced into producing harmful content is often hurting others whilst also being trapped in the pattern of abuse.”
When young people begin posting criminal content, the lines can become blurred between victim and offender.
They may simultaneously be victims of ongoing coercion and perpetrators of harm.
“A young person who’s been coerced into producing harmful content is often hurting others whilst also being trapped in the pattern of abuse,” Dr Weston says.
“They may want to stop but feel that they can’t.
This is important, Dr Weston says, because it means young people filming and posting criminal activities are rarely the right end-point of an investigation.
“Focusing on them leaves the network intact,” she says.
“It also means support services have to do two things at once: trauma-informed care and accountability. And the digital record of their involvement can follow them for years.”
As an emerging legal space, regulation is trying to keep up with how best to combat “crimfluencers”.
Dr Weston says online platforms need to include mechanisms which discourage this kind of activity.
“Tougher penalties for the kid who posts only go so far when the rewards are baked into the platforms,” she says.
“We need to downrank harmful content, hide engagement metrics, and give targeted users tools like one-click account lockdown, evidence capture, and disguised support links so they can get help without tipping off the person coercing them.”
Sadistic forms of crimfluencing
The term “crimfluencer” can apply to broad range of offences, shared across variety of platforms.
Dr Weston says what ties the offences together is that the recording and posting is part of the offence, rather than being incidental.
“It’s entertainment where the audience is a principal figure in the act. Status and rewards are built into the platforms — likes, follows, and reputation drive escalation,” she says.
“There’s also an organising layer of amplifiers and orchestrators who incentivise the offending, and most cases involve coercion rather than independent action.”
“From ‘post and boast’ offences like joyriding, theft and break-and-enter, through to self-harm and serious assaults, and at the extreme end violent extremist content and sadistic exploitation of young people.”
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) established Taskforce Pompilid late last year to target a decentralised online crime network which engages in crimes such as sadistic online exploitation, cyber-attacks and extremist-inspired violence.
“The decentralised online crime network is an international, primarily English-speaking, online community made up of several interconnected groups. Its members are predominantly young people involved in a range of criminal activities,” an AFP spokesperson said.
Members of the online community use their perceived anonymity to target, groom and exploit vulnerable youth, especially young girls, for sadistic pleasure and to build notoriety and status in their online community.
According to the AFP, members of the network are typically young males from English-speaking countries with common beliefs in violent extremism, nihilism, Nazism, satanism and sadism.
As of October last year, the AFP had identified 59 alleged offenders in Australia as members of the network.
“Some offenders are also victims. This blurring of profile can make the identification and disruption of the crime more difficult,” the spokesperson says.
“Stigma and shame are the biggest barriers for victims to seeking help.
“As parents and carers, this is something we can start to change, by being curious about online behaviours.”
