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> I was deeply disturbed by recent reporting by The New York Times about the nearly 70 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse that were reported

by jjk166 7y ago

> I was deeply disturbed by recent reporting by The New York Times about the nearly 70 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse that were reported by technology companies last year. If the tech companies are reporting 70 million photos and videos, doesn't that mean current measures are already effective at finding and reporting massive quantities of child sexual abuse content? It's like complaining about firefighters putting out too many fires - even if there is some real problem causing an excessive amount of fires to start, there's no reason to interfere with the firefighters successfully combatting the problem. It is quite frightening that the bill's prominent supporters won't list even a single problem with the current system that they hope their new "best practices" would rectify.

new_realist 7y ago
No, it shows there is a widespread problem. Like cockroaches, for every one you see, there are ten you don’t. Thankfully, once content is found, it is added to a database so that it can be quickly removed from the public internet. Emphasis on “public.”
solidsnack9000 7y ago
It's quite troubling, too, that the senator does not provide a baseline against which to assess the 70 million figure. How many of the pictures are duplicates or substantially duplicates? What is the report actually counting? How does that translate to number of victims? How many more images does the senator believe that the EARN IT act will uncover? The senator quoted the 70 million figure not to inform us, but to shock us and make us suspend judgement. It shouldn't be the norm for senators to respond without carefully sourced statistics, and it shouldn't be the norm for them to present a single statistic without a baseline or without something to compare it against, leaving it to our imagination, what the effect of their policies will be or what the scope of the issue is.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Also, how many of those images are just sexting between consenting young people? I do recall reading about kids who have been prosecuted for sharing images of themselves. And then there are all the cam entrepreneurs.
- kyledrake 7y ago
  As someone that's had to submit CP reports to NCMEC before (very rarely fortunately), I find that 70 million figure to be pretty strange and suspect. If you consider that Facebook has 2.45 billion active users, if it was one report per person it would represent 3% of Facebook's entire user base. I'm assuming there's some sort of automation in this, and perhaps a lot of duplicates (but MS PhotoDNA is supposed to catch this) or false reports. I wouldn't take that number at face value, it feels very off from my experience.
  - craftinator 7y ago
    It is a bit suspect, likely for the reasons you suggest. I can imagine that large caches of CP media does get transferred some portion of the time, which might be inflating the numbers.
einpoklum 7y ago
> nearly 70 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse that were reported by technology companies last year. Is there a reference for this figure? Also, how many individual children were involved in this content? What counts as abuse? How many appear each year?

by jjk166 7y ago

new_realist 7y ago

No, it shows there is a widespread problem. Like cockroaches, for every one you see, there are ten you don’t. Thankfully, once content is found, it is added to a database so that it can be quickly removed from the public internet. Emphasis on “public.”

solidsnack9000 7y ago

It's quite troubling, too, that the senator does not provide a baseline against which to assess the 70 million figure. How many of the pictures are duplicates or substantially duplicates? What is the report actually counting? How does that translate to number of victims? How many more images does the senator believe that the EARN IT act will uncover? The senator quoted the 70 million figure not to inform us, but to shock us and make us suspend judgement. It shouldn't be the norm for senators to respond without carefully sourced statistics, and it shouldn't be the norm for them to present a single statistic without a baseline or without something to compare it against, leaving it to our imagination, what the effect of their policies will be or what the scope of the issue is.

mirimir 7y ago
Also, how many of those images are just sexting between consenting young people? I do recall reading about kids who have been prosecuted for sharing images of themselves. And then there are all the cam entrepreneurs.
kyledrake 7y ago
As someone that's had to submit CP reports to NCMEC before (very rarely fortunately), I find that 70 million figure to be pretty strange and suspect. If you consider that Facebook has 2.45 billion active users, if it was one report per person it would represent 3% of Facebook's entire user base. I'm assuming there's some sort of automation in this, and perhaps a lot of duplicates (but MS PhotoDNA is supposed to catch this) or false reports. I wouldn't take that number at face value, it feels very off from my experience.
- craftinator 7y ago
  It is a bit suspect, likely for the reasons you suggest. I can imagine that large caches of CP media does get transferred some portion of the time, which might be inflating the numbers.

einpoklum 7y ago

> nearly 70 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse that were reported by technology companies last year. Is there a reference for this figure? Also, how many individual children were involved in this content? What counts as abuse? How many appear each year?