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Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

the_drunkard 6y ago
The victim actually took steps to have content removed and Twitter failed to do so (initially). I wonder if payment vendors will give Twitter the "Pornhub treatment" and de-platform their access to financial services. > Finally on Jan. 28, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn’t be taking down the material, which had already racked up over 167,000 views and 2,223 retweets, the suit states. > “Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” the response reads, according to the lawsuit.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Unfortunately, mainstream media won't pick on it, nor will the story gain traction because it is published in the NY Post. (if it is true) Edit:- to the folks down voting me, please show me some major outlets (NYT, BBC, etc) reporting on this. As far as we are concerned, this kind of stuff should be news.
  - isochronous 6y ago
    There's more than one explanation as to why "mainstream media" might not run a story. The NY Post isn't exactly known as a bastion of credible journalism. That's why they ran the Hunter Biden laptop story when everyone else passed because they couldn't verify it.
    - aerosmile 6y ago
      I agree with the overall sentiment of your post, but using the Hunter Biden laptop story as an example is an unfortunate choice. There's a popular view that politics had a lot to do with who picked up the story and who didn't, as opposed to just the strength of the case itself. I would recommend picking a less controversial example that highlights the shortcomings of NY Post's journalism, such as their reporting on the Boston Bombers [1]. [1] https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/the_new_york_posts_disgrace.php https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/the_new_york_posts_disgra...
      - Bud 6y ago
        Ahem. You mean alleged (by Rudy Giuliani, the least credible source in the continental United States) "Hunter Biden" laptop.
      - Applejinx 6y ago
        Or, it could be a garbage story manufactured by liars, implying that of all the outlets not running it, there's a chance they had looked into it and decided it was a garbage story manufactured by liars. Sometimes a thing that fails, fails because it's bad or disingenuous or both. It's possible this is a garbage suit that won't go anywhere because it's a garbage suit.
      - isochronous 6y ago
        Yeah, there are a lot of "popular views" that are complete and utter nonsense
    - briandear 6y ago
      Couldn’t verify? Or refused to try?
      - Bud 6y ago
        Tried, hard, and found that it was not substantive.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      I know that it's the Post. My point is that if the Post was able to cover it, why couldn't a bigger outlet such as NYT or the BBC spare the resources to cover it too. Not to mention, the Hunter Biden story was mostly speculative without proof. This one is a federal case with all details out in the open.
  - shakna 6y ago
    > Edit:- to the folks down voting me, please show me some major outlets (NYT, BBC, etc) reporting on this. As far as we are concerned, this kind of stuff should be news. The story is only a few hours old. "Mainstream" media often requires a level of verification that may take a few more days before you see their stories happen.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      I get it, that's its the Post. But there are a lot of things going against the major outlets in this debate: a.) It's a federal case so except for identities, most of the damning information against Twitter is out there b.) Major outlets such as NYT like to brag about the size of their newsrooms, but don't seem to have the resources to cover stories of CP on Twitter and the lackadaisical attitude of its censors c.) Major outlets should not take days to investigate something like this and write it up, especially if all the content matter is out there. Else obviously openly biased outlets with an axe to grind, such as the Post will pick it up, obviously reducing the credibility of stories they output.
      - icebraining 6y ago
        How is "all content matter out there"? From what I can tell, all we have is allegations from the accusing party.
        fakedang 6y ago
        It's a federal suit filed in DC, all the filings are public data, save for identities.
  - splaytreemap 6y ago
    The mainstream media won't pick this up because they like Twitter. If Facebook had done this, WaPo and CNN would be all over it.
  - Bud 6y ago
    Real media don't make decisions on whether to publish based on whether something also appears in the NY Post. That's a ludicrous assertion. What's actually happening: Murdoch rags like the Post have zero editorial standards, whereas others are attempting to actually vet this story before running it.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  I hope this doesn't result in Twitter banning all adult content which seems to be how all platforms handle pedophilia lawsuits/legal pressure these days.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  The whole deplatforming thing is mostly virtue-signalling. PornHub is an easy target and the people & companies involved in its deplatforming do not need it in any way (at least not in a way they would publicly admit - I'm sure some of them do consume its content) so it's an easy call to make and can gather significant support from certain conservative and religious circles. Twitter on the other hand is near-essential to most brands and media outlets, so the virtue-signalling benefit from deplatforming it is minuscule compared to the loss (the people most vocal in support of PornHub's deplatforming would be the first ones out of a job), not to mention that virtue-signalling only works if you have a place to brag about your action - if you deplatform Twitter, where are you going to brag about it?
  - trianglem 6y ago
    Is virtue signaling being a good person through your actions?
    - psyc 6y ago
      It can appear that way, sure. But it usually means broadcasting your ‘goodness’ visibly, to ingratiate yourself with certain people. It can also mean seeking to establish one’s moral superiority, creating a power imbalance for offensive or defensive purposes.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - mansion7 6y ago
      Not in my experience. That's why the distinction is made between "virtue signalling" and "actually being virtuous". It's more akin to showing up to a date wearing fancy clothes and driving an expensive, but borrowed car. Giving the symbols of wealth while possessing none, to fool an audience. Many of those I've seen signalling their virtue the loudest possess the least. The reason for the growth and awareness of the phenomena? In prior times, one must perform virtuous actions to appear virtuous. Now, it costs nothing, takes no effort, and carries no risk; it's as simple as typing 140 characters into a phone screen.
supercanuck 6y ago
This all sounds reasonable to me. Seems like the victim's first recourse should be through the Law not Twitter. >but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved, the suit states. >A support agent followed up and asked for a copy of Doe’s ID so they could prove it was him and after the teen complied, there was no response for a week, the family claims. >Only after this take-down demand from a federal agent did Twitter suspend the user accounts that were distributing the CSAM and report the CSAM to the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children,” states the suit, filed by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and two law firms. EDIT: Here is the timeline as far as I can tell. Dec 25, 2019: John Doe Becomes aware of Content on Twitter january 2020: John Doe and Fam: Report Content for Breaking Twitter Policies. January 28,2020: Twitter doesn't think the content breaks its policies January 30, 2020: Law Enforcement contacts Twitter to Remove the Content. Content is removed.
- jlkuester7 6y ago
  I am confused. What part of "We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time" seems reasonable? Personally this kind of content moderation seems to be the most important and it is absurd that Twitter should wait to remove this content until they are contacted by law enforcement. Certainly the best thing might have been a "both/and" approach where the victim contacts both Twitter and law enforcement without waiting to hear back from either. But, contacting Twitter directly should be the fasted way to get cp removed from their platform....
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jjk166 6y ago
    The full response is: "Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time. If you believe there’s a potential copyright infringement, please start a new report. If the content is hosted on a third-party website, you’ll need to contact that website’s support team to report it. Your safety is the most important thing, and if you believe you are in danger, we encourage you to contact your local authorities." Pretty clearly an automated response.
jlkuester7 6y ago
During all the recent debates regarding Parler, much was said about how Parler needed effective moderation like Twitter. This article is an important reminder that there is a lot more room for improvement in the moderation space and even companies that "do it right" are still making glaring mistakes. > We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time This is totally unacceptable. I wonder if there is some kind of legal liability that could apply here? Taken at face value, this message seems to indicate that a Twitter representative reviewed content and chose to not remove it which sounds a lot to me like knowingly and willfully distributing cp.... (edited to fix spelling of "Parler")
- na85 6y ago
  >This is totally unacceptable. And yet not at all surprising. These huge companies have a reputation for being faceless because they skimp on staffing their support teams and until the so-called "tech reckoning" have operated with virtual impunity.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > This article is an important reminder The only facts being reported in this article is that someone made claims in a lawsuit. > This is totally unacceptable. I wonder if there is some kind of legal liability that could apply here? Yes. Both civil liability (under the fairly recent exceptions relating sex trafficking to 230 protection) and criminal liability (section 230 has never applied to criminal liability) are possible, for the kinds of things claimed in the lawsuit. That civil liability is possible is, of course, almost certainly a factor in why the lawsuit was filed; while you can file a lawsuit where there is no available liability, it tends to be a waste of effort. Of course, one would also do well to take claims made in a lawsuit with some skepticism. If those didn't often turn out to be untrue, we wouldn't need courts nearly as much as we do.
- toss1 6y ago
  Exactly, aside from the civil liability already being pursued in the reported lawsuit, there should also be criminal liability for people making those editorial judgements, as far up the management chain as it goes. This is not some algorithmic failure that no human saw -it was specifically examined by a human with managers setting policy, and deemed to be acceptable to distribute. At that point, they are willfully distributing the material, and should be held accountable. Yes, the result may be harsh. Ideally, there would be advance notice of the potential legal jeopardy, but ignorance of the law is never an excuse, and child porn distribution is widely known to be illegal. Standard pull in the workers and get them to flip on the managers, repeat all the way up the chain as far as it goes. It should now be obvious to anyone that internet discussions are either moderated/edited, or will descend into toxic cesspools when any of a variety of bad actors are allowed to run unchecked. The hosts need to be responsible for their editing decisions, which are made at far larger scale than any newspaper or broadcaster.
tiagod 6y ago
I've had this happen to me on Facebook. Found a disgusting video involving children, reported it, got a response that there's nothing wrong with it. It's like the people reviewing this stuff have only a second to decide if the content should be deleted.
- devwastaken 6y ago
  If a person sees it at all. Twitter and Facebook are far too large to moderate effectively with humans. Most things are caught by automated image recognition, but that doesn't work for images not yet in the database.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- trident5000 6y ago
  Its a bunch of slave labor people in India who dont give a shit. Its an interesting dynamic that we have foreigners deciding what content Americans can and cannot see and can and cannot say.
  - driverdan 6y ago
    That's not true. FB has many US moderators, many outsourced to other companies.
    - trident5000 6y ago
      I think the odds of US moderators being any sort of majority or anything close to that is slim to zero. The savings are astronomical and is the same reason customer support of all kinds, even IT help, is outsourced. US mods are most likely a minority and a face.
      - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
        Why say this? You’re making things up and you happen to be wrong.
rstrstsb 6y ago
There is still plenty of Hunter Biden child porn on twitter too. Why hasn't Hunter Biden been arrested yet? (cause his dad is the president) Why hasn't Jack Dorsey been arrested yet for lying under oath?
- rstrstsb 6y ago
  why are you downvoting? Cause there is plenty of evidence of blue team's son RAPING CHILDREN!!!!!
- SeriousM 6y ago
  Mods please
  - macinjosh 6y ago
    mommy, mommy, help me!!
  - fsflover 6y ago
    You can flag it yourself, too, if you click on the time of the post.
d33lio 6y ago
Even as someone who's glad Biden is now president - it's a bit unnerving to be living in a time where a service bans the sitting united states president without batting an eye but engages in legal battles to defend the distribution of child pornography on their "open platform". I guess people posting spicy takes on government happens to be more of an active risk to society than literal child predators?
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  People are banned from HN all the time for being rude. Does the reason even matter though? Twitter can decide who uses its services and who doesn't as long as it doesn't violate existing laws.
  - rosmax_1337 6y ago
    You shouldn't compare a small and niche community like HN to a website like Twitter. Twitter is the web equivalent of a public square, where everyone gets an opportunity at a speakers corner, HN is the web equivalent of a club house, or something private like that. There are laws governing public spaces all around the world, like town squares, where people are guaranteed rights to speak. Laws like these need to be adapted to fit the internet as well, asap IMO. As much as you might like to think that the Town square analogy is incorret, because the protocol HTTPS is the real Town square, and Twitter is really just another club house. (except very big) I also disagree with that, because of the nature of social media and platform monopoly. There will ever really only be one "youtube", one "facebook" and one "twitter", certainly nowadays when these social media platforms have grown to such an extent, covering the entire globe, let alone nations! This is because _the power of a social media platform lies in it being social_ i.e., the place where you find other people. The platforms on top, stay on top.
    - ketamine__ 6y ago
      A lot of Twitter users are moving their followers to Substack. Check out what Balaji is doing. The social network MeWe is growing rapidly. There is always room for competition but the people complaining censorship are defeatist.
rendall 6y ago
It's a story that's so completely outside of my personal experience that I cannot evaluate it In 14 years of holding a Twitter account, I've never seen anything even close to such things on Twitter, and wouldn't use the platform if I did. If I were to see child pornography on Twitter, I would immediately report it to law enforcement and close my account Well, I hope that poor child wins justice.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Welcome to the filter bubble. What you see on twitter, facebook, google, youtube, etc. is going to be radically different than what someone else sees.
  - rendall 6y ago
    Indeed. Knowing this is why I don't immediately doubt the story, despite its being outside my experience
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  Start reading a single (non porn related) message from one these creeps and your Twitter timeline will be inundated with illegal porn content in no time. Twitter is absolutely rife with that horrible stuff, and Twitter certainly does the minimum to remove any of that, as demonstrated by that article. Why even give the benefit of the doubt? Someone reports CP, remove it, period. Of course, Twitter makes money off it... People claim Twitter can't possibly moderate content at scale, except that Twitter makes money at that same scale. Social media can't have it both way, especially when it comes to CP.
  - isochronous 6y ago
    "People claim Twitter can't possibly moderate content at scale, except that Twitter makes money at that same scale." I'm sorry, but is that supposed to be a logical argument? Because it doesn't actually make any sense. Twitter is a platform that allows pretty much anyone with an internet connection to post content. There were, on average, 500 million tweets posted per day last year. So on one side you have the set of potential content creators, churning out half a billion tweets per day, and that number will almost certainly continue to steadily increase. So, as a company with a set amount of income, and who is beholden to its shareholders, what's your plan to moderate 500 million tweets per day while still turning a reasonable profit?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
draw_down 6y ago
Good thing they got Trump off of there, though! Whew.
newbie578 6y ago
Now then, I expect a swift retribution from other companies to do the "right" thing and banish Twitter from our reach. Remove them from Google searches, de-platform them from the App Store and cut their access to hosting services. They have failed to moderate their platform, in fact in this case it seems they did on the contrary, so it is only just they get their part of punishment.
- isochronous 6y ago
  Truly a disingenuous argument. Parler didn't get TOS'd because they had things fall through their moderation process; they got TOS'd because they did not have a workable moderation process in place, period. Twitter obviously does make mistakes - both AIs and humans are fallible - but they have about as good a moderation process in place as it's possible to have with the amount of message traffic they process. Also, I'd like to point out that the only evidence WE'VE seen of this so far are a few claims made in a lawsuit.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
    The lack of moderation on Parler was considered a feature. Except it actually did have moderation, but it was leftists voices that were silenced.
phkahler 6y ago
This is critical to Twitter's crappy stance. They want to act like a neutral party to avoid liability (like common carrier status of US telco), yet they also want to censor what and who they feel like (via their ToS and being a private company). Their stance is inconsistent and this type of case may lead to resolution of that. Unfortunately I predict they will just add a few illegal things to their ToS as being twitter offenses.
- icebraining 6y ago
  This is not true, they have no liability even if they don't act (or pretend to act) neutrally. And this case doesn't really have anything to do with their ToS, they removal of CP is required by law.
LatteLazy 6y ago
You can literally claim anything in a lawsuit. Let's wait for some evidence or a judgement or a reply?
1_2__4 6y ago
I guess in 2021, HNers think the NY Post is a legitimate media outlet straining for objectivity, rather than the tabloid rag that they are. And I guess we'll all have a highly partisan discussion over it despite the Post obviously having a huge axe to grind against Twitter, further calling into question their "reporting".
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  So you’re saying that NY Post fabricated the lawsuit that has been filed in court? Having an axe to grind doesn’t turn a fact into a falsehood.
bigphishy 6y ago
Wow, I don't mean to issue an ad-hominem attack... but I do not consider anything from NY Post legitimate, I'd even venture to say NY Post is a tabloid owned by News Corporation, and surprised that this is on HackerNews.
- 1_player 6y ago
  Sadly, as more people flock to this site, it's becoming less Hacker News and more like Google News. That seems to be the vast majority of stories submitted by OP, and the clickbait and inflammatory titles tend to rise to the front page.
- prasadjoglekar 6y ago
  The NY Post has a well known conservative bias, but that doesn't make their reporting illegitimate. You can disagree with their opinion pieces, but the factual reporting (in this case - that there's a lawsuit against Twitter) can be objectively checked. Also as NYC'er, my take is that a lot of their opinions are quite accurate and correct.
- j_walter 6y ago
  Saying you don't consider ANYTHING from the NY Post to be legitimate is admitting you have personal bias against a news site because they lean one way politically. Why not read the story, see the evidence and decided yourself? If you go to some place like Twitter that you find credible, then you won't ever see this story. A lot of people are talking about the Hunter Biden laptop story giving them a bad rep, but we now know that he is in fact under investigation for Tax Evasion and it could be in part to emails found on that computer (at least the ones that were published talked about income from sources that were likely not reported). Not saying the case is tied to that laptop since we don't know, but it could be.
- tzs 6y ago
  A better submission would have been to the Business Insider story on this that BI published yesterday [1]. BI has a much better reputation than the NY Post, and BI had the story a day before NY Post. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/minor-lawsuit-twitter-explicit-video-court-2021-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/minor-lawsuit-twitter-explic...
Gunax 6y ago
Folks, let's assume that the Twitter mod saw this and did not classify it as child porn. How can a twitter mod decide if it's child porn (as opposed to just 'porn')? I am not sure there is a proper solution for this. How can they verify the age of an unknown person?
- dx87 6y ago
  They could just remove it if they can't tell, same way a bouncer will throw you out of a bar if you don't have ID. I don't know why people are giving social media companies a pass on what goes on just because their job is hard. Nobody is holding a gun to their head and telling them that they need to run an unmanageable platform, they wanted this many users.
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    Maybe they do remove it if they can't tell. We don't know. Maybe they contacted the source of the video and they confirmed the age of the actors. Then what? I didn't even know that Twitter had porn at all. It seems like it might be in their best interest to remove it altogether. There are sites that specialize in it, that I'd have to imagine are better sources for most people.
    - icebraining 6y ago
      We do know, at least if we take the accuser's word as true: > A support agent followed up and asked for a copy of Doe’s ID so they could prove it was him and after the teen complied, there was no response for a week, the family claims. (...) Finally on Jan. 28, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn’t be taking down the material, which had already racked up over 167,000 views and 2,223 retweets, the suit states. “Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” the response reads, according to the lawsuit.
      - kenjackson 6y ago
        We still don't know what Twitter knows. It's not even clear if Twitter gave a more comprehensive reason. That said, if we assume what the accuser said and implied is true, then Twitter was criminally negligent IMO (IANAL). But I guess we'll find out in court.
jes 6y ago
We need effective regulation of these platforms. The regulation must be forward-looking. Trying to respond after a social media company has harmed the public, say by hosting illegal content, is not good enough. Social media companies cannot be allowed to say "Oh, sorry Congress, we made a mistake. We have now fixed it and it won't happen again." It might be that we need an agency like the FCC to regulate the internal operations of these companies and bring about true shared decision making. Attempts to exclude regulatory authorities from meetings should result in criminal charges and prison time for repeat offenders.
phnofive 6y ago
The lawsuit digs into the details of the timeline - from initial report by the plaintiff to removal of the content took nine days (with the help of law enforcement) - which makes me wonder how much merit there is to the suit, Twitter’s fumble notwithstanding.
Bud 6y ago
So we're posting sensationalist, hyper-inflated claptrap from the Murdoch-rag NY Post on Hacker News now? Let's not, instead. If this is really a story, and if that headline is really justified, then a more reliable source can be found. Set phasers to flag and fire.
- edbob 6y ago
  The Hunter Biden laptop story has been confirmed by witnesses and the cryptographic signatures on the email, while not a single shred of evidence that it's a "plant" has been found. This should give the NYPost a huge boost in credibility over the media outlets that falsely claim that it was a plant. This would (sadly) make the NYPost one of the more reputable media outlets that we have. Besides that, the lawsuit is readily available: https://www.scribd.com/document/491614044/Doe-v-Twitter https://www.scribd.com/document/491614044/Doe-v-Twitter
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - objectivetruth 6y ago
    "the cryptographic signatures on the email" <--? Like, there were TLS headers in an email client on the laptop that were confirmed to be on a server somewhere? Authenticated by a neutral forensics expert? Or are you saying Hunter Biden using GPG or PGP to encrypt/sign all of his email and the emails were authenticated that way by a neutral forensics expert? Because my understanding is that Giuliani never actually released the actual data, and that the FBI itself has the laptop. "confirmed by witnesses?" <-- the guy in the tam o'shanter hat on Fox News this week? Also, I didn't see any media outlets report that "it was a plant," just reporting that the FBI was investigating the situation.
throwawaysea 6y ago
I've noticed that Twitter is very arbitrary in terms of what they moderate and don't moderate. I've seen accounts for antifa groups or other groups engaged in criminality and violence several times, and no action has been taken on my reports. Invariably, the reports that aren't acted upon are ones involving groups that align with left-leaning political sentiments. This type of selective enforcement of rules is extremely unjust, and I am not at all surprised to see this inconsistent enforcement in this instance either.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
  Funny, a common refrain of those very accounts is "Twitter overmoderates left wing accounts and does nothing with right wing hate speech". I think this doesn't point to Twitter being arbitrary; instead, I think it points to Twitter doing absolutely nothing until its hand is forced.
javajosh 6y ago
I remember a story about someone getting arrested for "child porn" going through an airport when some TSA agent found a video of a mans kids taking a bath on his phone. I'm not sure what happened in that case, but it has made me a) hesitant to take similar video and photos of my kids (even though bathtime is really fun and I want memories! My parents have plenty of bathtime pics of me as a kid, and I'm glad!), and b) a lot more skeptical whenever I hear someone claim "child porn". Similar to how "registered sex offender" has lost a great deal of weight since apparently cities around the country apply this label to drunk people pissing on buildings. This doesn't invalidate ALL such labels, it only means that the label itself is NOT ENOUGH for me to assume I know what happened. In short, "the system" has lost its credibility with me. (The same applies to other labels like "convicted felon" or "ever arrested". The ease with which these labels are applied, especially as the result of a corrupt plea bargain culture, and a society where all LEOs have a "marshal law bubble" around them, ruin the effect for me. And I wish it ruined the effect for more people.)
- colpabar 6y ago
  It seems pretty clear you did not read the article, so here The federal suit, filed Wednesday by the victim and his mother in the Northern District of California, alleges Twitter made money off the clips, which showed a 13-year-old engaged in sex acts and are a form of child sexual abuse material, or child porn, the suit states. The teen — who is now 17 and lives in Florida — is identified only as John Doe and was between 13 and 14 years old when sex traffickers, posing as a 16-year-old female classmate, started chatting with him on Snapchat, the suit alleges. Doe and the traffickers allegedly exchanged nude photos before the conversation turned to blackmail: If the teen didn’t share more sexually graphic photos and videos, the explicit material he’d already sent would be shared with his “parents, coach, pastor” and others, the suit states. Doe, acting under duress, initially complied and sent videos of himself performing sex acts and was also told to include another child in his videos, which he did, the suit claims. Eventually, Doe blocked the traffickers and they stopped harassing him, but at some point in 2019, the videos surfaced on Twitter under two accounts that were known to share child sexual abuse material, court papers allege.
  - 6y ago
throwawayosiu1 6y ago
ah, maybe it's time we deplatform Twitter no? maybe it's tongue in cheek but in all honesty, I find it extremely hypocritical that the Ayatollah of Iran, dis-information news organizations (esp those based in China) and now CP are fine on Twitter but god forbid some people on the right wing use the "#notmypresident" or "#learntocode" hashtags - both of which were extensively used by the left in 2016 without any repercussions what so ever. I don't mind Twitter having it's policies (Infact I support it)- but selective enforcement of said policies is the issue.
- fabbari 6y ago
  I just checked: there are thousands of tweets with the #notmypresident hashtag. Not sure why you're not seeing them. Care to elaborate?
  - throwawayosiu1 6y ago
    Weird, While I currently see none, I do see them logged out though. Thanks for the heads-up. Looks like I might not be seeing the full picture logged in.
    - dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
      Maybe you’ve used the “muted words” setting sometime in the last to hide the hashtag?
DanBC 6y ago
I have to say, I don't quite understand why services find it so difficult to remove this material. This has been a long standing problem with Twitter. They've improved a bit, but there's still problems. Young people approach these platforms and say "here are some images of child sexual abuse that you're hosting. I know they're CSE because I'm the subject of the photos and I was <18 at the time". The platforms sometimes ignore them. Children are then stuck, not knowing how to get this "child porn"[1] taken down. We need to help young people understand what routes are then available to them. 1) Write to the legal department. Twitter does not make this easy. Their "contact us" form doesn't have a section for "I want to report CSE material". https://help.twitter.com/en/contact-us https://help.twitter.com/en/contact-us But the post addresses are: Twitter, Inc. c/o Trust & Safety - Legal Policy 1355 Market Street, Suite 900 San Francisco, CA 94103 Twitter International Company c/o Trust & Safety - Legal Policy One Cumberland Place Fenian Street Dublin 2 D02 AX07 Ireland 2) Contact their local law enforcement office, and point them to this page (for Twitter, but all services should have something similar) https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-law-enforcement-support https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-law-e... 3) Contact IWF or CEOP. IWF will generate hashes of the images and Twitter will, eventually, use those hashes to remove the images. This will take some time. https://www.iwf.org.uk/ https://www.iwf.org.uk/ [1] I'm only using that term for the Google search term.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  If they know they are hosting CP, are they legally responsible for it?
  - worldofmatthew 6y ago
    I know some people cited section 223, allowing for prison for up to two years and or fined.
kevwil 6y ago
Moderation seems to be a very slippery slope. IMHO there's no way to truly win; policies eventually trend toward either absolute free speech or blatant censorship. This is the critical flaw in social media, as either trend is problematic. "The only way to win the game is not to play."
- stretchcat 6y ago
  Moderation of this sort of content is so far away from any slope, it may as well be Flatland.
sonotmyname 6y ago
My wife has done some work with child exploitation organizations around this exact problem. Sadly, this is not a surprise at all. I’d venture that maybe 5% of the posts they report are removed, and the offending accounts are essentially never punished. To make matters worse, given that pedophilia and child porn is now tied up with QAnon, some of her peers have started to have their accounts banned when they report this stuff, as apparently they’re being caught up in an anti-conspiracy filter. Sigh...
teorema 6y ago
I feel increasingly lonely in wanting some kind of common carrier status social media platform. If not Twitter then a decentralized open source one.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
NYPost didn't bother linking to the complaint or vetting any of the details of the case. Complaint: https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Doe-v-Twitter_FiledComplaint_012021.pdf https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Doe-v-T... Case history: https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/37985226/Doe_v_Twitter,_Inc https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/37985226/Doe_v_Twit... The parties bringing the suit include The National Center on Sexual Exploitation. They are (unsurprisingly) an anti-porn org, formerly known as Morality in Media. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Exploitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Expl...
- pardonmesir 6y ago
  NYPost is just about the worst “mainstream” publication available and anything they’ve ever done devalues the technologies which transmit it and degrades the minds that consume it. Unfortunate to see them linked & highly ranked on HN.
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    The problems with NYP here is that their coverage is lazy and inept. That few details I added were the minimum that belonged in this story - and it was far from everything that was needed. I'm not calling out the NYP here. Nearly every US news org is equally inept and lazy, no matter their ideology (real or perceived). I acknowledge that not all orgs are like that. And often disappointing news outlets sometimes perform absolutely brilliant journalism (eg: Panama Papers). But most basic reporting is just put out there, without even minimal vetting of details. We've long deserved better.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NotChina 6y ago
Inconsistency with a wordy explanation.

The victim actually took steps to have content removed and Twitter failed to do so (initially). I wonder if payment vendors will give Twitter the "Pornhub treatment" and de-platform their access to financial services. > Finally on Jan. 28, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn’t be taking down the material, which had already racked up over 167,000 views and 2,223 retweets, the suit states. > “Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” the response reads, according to the lawsuit.

fakedang 6y ago
Unfortunately, mainstream media won't pick on it, nor will the story gain traction because it is published in the NY Post. (if it is true) Edit:- to the folks down voting me, please show me some major outlets (NYT, BBC, etc) reporting on this. As far as we are concerned, this kind of stuff should be news.
- isochronous 6y ago
  There's more than one explanation as to why "mainstream media" might not run a story. The NY Post isn't exactly known as a bastion of credible journalism. That's why they ran the Hunter Biden laptop story when everyone else passed because they couldn't verify it.
  - aerosmile 6y ago
    I agree with the overall sentiment of your post, but using the Hunter Biden laptop story as an example is an unfortunate choice. There's a popular view that politics had a lot to do with who picked up the story and who didn't, as opposed to just the strength of the case itself. I would recommend picking a less controversial example that highlights the shortcomings of NY Post's journalism, such as their reporting on the Boston Bombers [1]. [1] https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/the_new_york_posts_disgrace.php https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/the_new_york_posts_disgra...
    - Bud 6y ago
      Ahem. You mean alleged (by Rudy Giuliani, the least credible source in the continental United States) "Hunter Biden" laptop.
    - Applejinx 6y ago
      Or, it could be a garbage story manufactured by liars, implying that of all the outlets not running it, there's a chance they had looked into it and decided it was a garbage story manufactured by liars. Sometimes a thing that fails, fails because it's bad or disingenuous or both. It's possible this is a garbage suit that won't go anywhere because it's a garbage suit.
    - isochronous 6y ago
      Yeah, there are a lot of "popular views" that are complete and utter nonsense
  - briandear 6y ago
    Couldn’t verify? Or refused to try?
    - Bud 6y ago
      Tried, hard, and found that it was not substantive.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    I know that it's the Post. My point is that if the Post was able to cover it, why couldn't a bigger outlet such as NYT or the BBC spare the resources to cover it too. Not to mention, the Hunter Biden story was mostly speculative without proof. This one is a federal case with all details out in the open.
- shakna 6y ago
  > Edit:- to the folks down voting me, please show me some major outlets (NYT, BBC, etc) reporting on this. As far as we are concerned, this kind of stuff should be news. The story is only a few hours old. "Mainstream" media often requires a level of verification that may take a few more days before you see their stories happen.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    I get it, that's its the Post. But there are a lot of things going against the major outlets in this debate: a.) It's a federal case so except for identities, most of the damning information against Twitter is out there b.) Major outlets such as NYT like to brag about the size of their newsrooms, but don't seem to have the resources to cover stories of CP on Twitter and the lackadaisical attitude of its censors c.) Major outlets should not take days to investigate something like this and write it up, especially if all the content matter is out there. Else obviously openly biased outlets with an axe to grind, such as the Post will pick it up, obviously reducing the credibility of stories they output.
    - icebraining 6y ago
      How is "all content matter out there"? From what I can tell, all we have is allegations from the accusing party.
      - fakedang 6y ago
        It's a federal suit filed in DC, all the filings are public data, save for identities.
- splaytreemap 6y ago
  The mainstream media won't pick this up because they like Twitter. If Facebook had done this, WaPo and CNN would be all over it.
- Bud 6y ago
  Real media don't make decisions on whether to publish based on whether something also appears in the NY Post. That's a ludicrous assertion. What's actually happening: Murdoch rags like the Post have zero editorial standards, whereas others are attempting to actually vet this story before running it.
d1zzy 6y ago
I hope this doesn't result in Twitter banning all adult content which seems to be how all platforms handle pedophilia lawsuits/legal pressure these days.
Nextgrid 6y ago
The whole deplatforming thing is mostly virtue-signalling. PornHub is an easy target and the people & companies involved in its deplatforming do not need it in any way (at least not in a way they would publicly admit - I'm sure some of them do consume its content) so it's an easy call to make and can gather significant support from certain conservative and religious circles. Twitter on the other hand is near-essential to most brands and media outlets, so the virtue-signalling benefit from deplatforming it is minuscule compared to the loss (the people most vocal in support of PornHub's deplatforming would be the first ones out of a job), not to mention that virtue-signalling only works if you have a place to brag about your action - if you deplatform Twitter, where are you going to brag about it?
- trianglem 6y ago
  Is virtue signaling being a good person through your actions?
  - psyc 6y ago
    It can appear that way, sure. But it usually means broadcasting your ‘goodness’ visibly, to ingratiate yourself with certain people. It can also mean seeking to establish one’s moral superiority, creating a power imbalance for offensive or defensive purposes.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - mansion7 6y ago
    Not in my experience. That's why the distinction is made between "virtue signalling" and "actually being virtuous". It's more akin to showing up to a date wearing fancy clothes and driving an expensive, but borrowed car. Giving the symbols of wealth while possessing none, to fool an audience. Many of those I've seen signalling their virtue the loudest possess the least. The reason for the growth and awareness of the phenomena? In prior times, one must perform virtuous actions to appear virtuous. Now, it costs nothing, takes no effort, and carries no risk; it's as simple as typing 140 characters into a phone screen.

supercanuck 6y ago

This all sounds reasonable to me. Seems like the victim's first recourse should be through the Law not Twitter. >but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved, the suit states. >A support agent followed up and asked for a copy of Doe’s ID so they could prove it was him and after the teen complied, there was no response for a week, the family claims. >Only after this take-down demand from a federal agent did Twitter suspend the user accounts that were distributing the CSAM and report the CSAM to the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children,” states the suit, filed by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and two law firms. EDIT: Here is the timeline as far as I can tell. Dec 25, 2019: John Doe Becomes aware of Content on Twitter january 2020: John Doe and Fam: Report Content for Breaking Twitter Policies. January 28,2020: Twitter doesn't think the content breaks its policies January 30, 2020: Law Enforcement contacts Twitter to Remove the Content. Content is removed.

jlkuester7 6y ago
I am confused. What part of "We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time" seems reasonable? Personally this kind of content moderation seems to be the most important and it is absurd that Twitter should wait to remove this content until they are contacted by law enforcement. Certainly the best thing might have been a "both/and" approach where the victim contacts both Twitter and law enforcement without waiting to hear back from either. But, contacting Twitter directly should be the fasted way to get cp removed from their platform....
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jjk166 6y ago
  The full response is: "Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time. If you believe there’s a potential copyright infringement, please start a new report. If the content is hosted on a third-party website, you’ll need to contact that website’s support team to report it. Your safety is the most important thing, and if you believe you are in danger, we encourage you to contact your local authorities." Pretty clearly an automated response.

jlkuester7 6y ago

During all the recent debates regarding Parler, much was said about how Parler needed effective moderation like Twitter. This article is an important reminder that there is a lot more room for improvement in the moderation space and even companies that "do it right" are still making glaring mistakes. > We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time This is totally unacceptable. I wonder if there is some kind of legal liability that could apply here? Taken at face value, this message seems to indicate that a Twitter representative reviewed content and chose to not remove it which sounds a lot to me like knowingly and willfully distributing cp.... (edited to fix spelling of "Parler")

na85 6y ago
>This is totally unacceptable. And yet not at all surprising. These huge companies have a reputation for being faceless because they skimp on staffing their support teams and until the so-called "tech reckoning" have operated with virtual impunity.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> This article is an important reminder The only facts being reported in this article is that someone made claims in a lawsuit. > This is totally unacceptable. I wonder if there is some kind of legal liability that could apply here? Yes. Both civil liability (under the fairly recent exceptions relating sex trafficking to 230 protection) and criminal liability (section 230 has never applied to criminal liability) are possible, for the kinds of things claimed in the lawsuit. That civil liability is possible is, of course, almost certainly a factor in why the lawsuit was filed; while you can file a lawsuit where there is no available liability, it tends to be a waste of effort. Of course, one would also do well to take claims made in a lawsuit with some skepticism. If those didn't often turn out to be untrue, we wouldn't need courts nearly as much as we do.
toss1 6y ago
Exactly, aside from the civil liability already being pursued in the reported lawsuit, there should also be criminal liability for people making those editorial judgements, as far up the management chain as it goes. This is not some algorithmic failure that no human saw -it was specifically examined by a human with managers setting policy, and deemed to be acceptable to distribute. At that point, they are willfully distributing the material, and should be held accountable. Yes, the result may be harsh. Ideally, there would be advance notice of the potential legal jeopardy, but ignorance of the law is never an excuse, and child porn distribution is widely known to be illegal. Standard pull in the workers and get them to flip on the managers, repeat all the way up the chain as far as it goes. It should now be obvious to anyone that internet discussions are either moderated/edited, or will descend into toxic cesspools when any of a variety of bad actors are allowed to run unchecked. The hosts need to be responsible for their editing decisions, which are made at far larger scale than any newspaper or broadcaster.

tiagod 6y ago

I've had this happen to me on Facebook. Found a disgusting video involving children, reported it, got a response that there's nothing wrong with it. It's like the people reviewing this stuff have only a second to decide if the content should be deleted.

devwastaken 6y ago
If a person sees it at all. Twitter and Facebook are far too large to moderate effectively with humans. Most things are caught by automated image recognition, but that doesn't work for images not yet in the database.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
trident5000 6y ago
Its a bunch of slave labor people in India who dont give a shit. Its an interesting dynamic that we have foreigners deciding what content Americans can and cannot see and can and cannot say.
- driverdan 6y ago
  That's not true. FB has many US moderators, many outsourced to other companies.
  - trident5000 6y ago
    I think the odds of US moderators being any sort of majority or anything close to that is slim to zero. The savings are astronomical and is the same reason customer support of all kinds, even IT help, is outsourced. US mods are most likely a minority and a face.
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      Why say this? You’re making things up and you happen to be wrong.

rstrstsb 6y ago

There is still plenty of Hunter Biden child porn on twitter too. Why hasn't Hunter Biden been arrested yet? (cause his dad is the president) Why hasn't Jack Dorsey been arrested yet for lying under oath?

rstrstsb 6y ago
why are you downvoting? Cause there is plenty of evidence of blue team's son RAPING CHILDREN!!!!!
SeriousM 6y ago
Mods please
- macinjosh 6y ago
  mommy, mommy, help me!!
- fsflover 6y ago
  You can flag it yourself, too, if you click on the time of the post.

d33lio 6y ago

Even as someone who's glad Biden is now president - it's a bit unnerving to be living in a time where a service bans the sitting united states president without batting an eye but engages in legal battles to defend the distribution of child pornography on their "open platform". I guess people posting spicy takes on government happens to be more of an active risk to society than literal child predators?

ketamine__ 6y ago
People are banned from HN all the time for being rude. Does the reason even matter though? Twitter can decide who uses its services and who doesn't as long as it doesn't violate existing laws.
- rosmax_1337 6y ago
  You shouldn't compare a small and niche community like HN to a website like Twitter. Twitter is the web equivalent of a public square, where everyone gets an opportunity at a speakers corner, HN is the web equivalent of a club house, or something private like that. There are laws governing public spaces all around the world, like town squares, where people are guaranteed rights to speak. Laws like these need to be adapted to fit the internet as well, asap IMO. As much as you might like to think that the Town square analogy is incorret, because the protocol HTTPS is the real Town square, and Twitter is really just another club house. (except very big) I also disagree with that, because of the nature of social media and platform monopoly. There will ever really only be one "youtube", one "facebook" and one "twitter", certainly nowadays when these social media platforms have grown to such an extent, covering the entire globe, let alone nations! This is because _the power of a social media platform lies in it being social_ i.e., the place where you find other people. The platforms on top, stay on top.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    A lot of Twitter users are moving their followers to Substack. Check out what Balaji is doing. The social network MeWe is growing rapidly. There is always room for competition but the people complaining censorship are defeatist.

rendall 6y ago

It's a story that's so completely outside of my personal experience that I cannot evaluate it In 14 years of holding a Twitter account, I've never seen anything even close to such things on Twitter, and wouldn't use the platform if I did. If I were to see child pornography on Twitter, I would immediately report it to law enforcement and close my account Well, I hope that poor child wins justice.

marcinzm 6y ago
Welcome to the filter bubble. What you see on twitter, facebook, google, youtube, etc. is going to be radically different than what someone else sees.
- rendall 6y ago
  Indeed. Knowing this is why I don't immediately doubt the story, despite its being outside my experience
throw_m239339 6y ago
Start reading a single (non porn related) message from one these creeps and your Twitter timeline will be inundated with illegal porn content in no time. Twitter is absolutely rife with that horrible stuff, and Twitter certainly does the minimum to remove any of that, as demonstrated by that article. Why even give the benefit of the doubt? Someone reports CP, remove it, period. Of course, Twitter makes money off it... People claim Twitter can't possibly moderate content at scale, except that Twitter makes money at that same scale. Social media can't have it both way, especially when it comes to CP.
- isochronous 6y ago
  "People claim Twitter can't possibly moderate content at scale, except that Twitter makes money at that same scale." I'm sorry, but is that supposed to be a logical argument? Because it doesn't actually make any sense. Twitter is a platform that allows pretty much anyone with an internet connection to post content. There were, on average, 500 million tweets posted per day last year. So on one side you have the set of potential content creators, churning out half a billion tweets per day, and that number will almost certainly continue to steadily increase. So, as a company with a set amount of income, and who is beholden to its shareholders, what's your plan to moderate 500 million tweets per day while still turning a reasonable profit?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

draw_down 6y ago

Good thing they got Trump off of there, though! Whew.

newbie578 6y ago

Now then, I expect a swift retribution from other companies to do the "right" thing and banish Twitter from our reach. Remove them from Google searches, de-platform them from the App Store and cut their access to hosting services. They have failed to moderate their platform, in fact in this case it seems they did on the contrary, so it is only just they get their part of punishment.

isochronous 6y ago
Truly a disingenuous argument. Parler didn't get TOS'd because they had things fall through their moderation process; they got TOS'd because they did not have a workable moderation process in place, period. Twitter obviously does make mistakes - both AIs and humans are fallible - but they have about as good a moderation process in place as it's possible to have with the amount of message traffic they process. Also, I'd like to point out that the only evidence WE'VE seen of this so far are a few claims made in a lawsuit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
  The lack of moderation on Parler was considered a feature. Except it actually did have moderation, but it was leftists voices that were silenced.

phkahler 6y ago

This is critical to Twitter's crappy stance. They want to act like a neutral party to avoid liability (like common carrier status of US telco), yet they also want to censor what and who they feel like (via their ToS and being a private company). Their stance is inconsistent and this type of case may lead to resolution of that. Unfortunately I predict they will just add a few illegal things to their ToS as being twitter offenses.

icebraining 6y ago
This is not true, they have no liability even if they don't act (or pretend to act) neutrally. And this case doesn't really have anything to do with their ToS, they removal of CP is required by law.

LatteLazy 6y ago

You can literally claim anything in a lawsuit. Let's wait for some evidence or a judgement or a reply?

1_2__4 6y ago

I guess in 2021, HNers think the NY Post is a legitimate media outlet straining for objectivity, rather than the tabloid rag that they are. And I guess we'll all have a highly partisan discussion over it despite the Post obviously having a huge axe to grind against Twitter, further calling into question their "reporting".

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
So you’re saying that NY Post fabricated the lawsuit that has been filed in court? Having an axe to grind doesn’t turn a fact into a falsehood.

bigphishy 6y ago

Wow, I don't mean to issue an ad-hominem attack... but I do not consider anything from NY Post legitimate, I'd even venture to say NY Post is a tabloid owned by News Corporation, and surprised that this is on HackerNews.

1_player 6y ago
Sadly, as more people flock to this site, it's becoming less Hacker News and more like Google News. That seems to be the vast majority of stories submitted by OP, and the clickbait and inflammatory titles tend to rise to the front page.
prasadjoglekar 6y ago
The NY Post has a well known conservative bias, but that doesn't make their reporting illegitimate. You can disagree with their opinion pieces, but the factual reporting (in this case - that there's a lawsuit against Twitter) can be objectively checked. Also as NYC'er, my take is that a lot of their opinions are quite accurate and correct.
j_walter 6y ago
Saying you don't consider ANYTHING from the NY Post to be legitimate is admitting you have personal bias against a news site because they lean one way politically. Why not read the story, see the evidence and decided yourself? If you go to some place like Twitter that you find credible, then you won't ever see this story. A lot of people are talking about the Hunter Biden laptop story giving them a bad rep, but we now know that he is in fact under investigation for Tax Evasion and it could be in part to emails found on that computer (at least the ones that were published talked about income from sources that were likely not reported). Not saying the case is tied to that laptop since we don't know, but it could be.
tzs 6y ago
A better submission would have been to the Business Insider story on this that BI published yesterday [1]. BI has a much better reputation than the NY Post, and BI had the story a day before NY Post. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/minor-lawsuit-twitter-explicit-video-court-2021-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/minor-lawsuit-twitter-explic...

Gunax 6y ago

Folks, let's assume that the Twitter mod saw this and did not classify it as child porn. How can a twitter mod decide if it's child porn (as opposed to just 'porn')? I am not sure there is a proper solution for this. How can they verify the age of an unknown person?

dx87 6y ago
They could just remove it if they can't tell, same way a bouncer will throw you out of a bar if you don't have ID. I don't know why people are giving social media companies a pass on what goes on just because their job is hard. Nobody is holding a gun to their head and telling them that they need to run an unmanageable platform, they wanted this many users.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  Maybe they do remove it if they can't tell. We don't know. Maybe they contacted the source of the video and they confirmed the age of the actors. Then what? I didn't even know that Twitter had porn at all. It seems like it might be in their best interest to remove it altogether. There are sites that specialize in it, that I'd have to imagine are better sources for most people.
  - icebraining 6y ago
    We do know, at least if we take the accuser's word as true: > A support agent followed up and asked for a copy of Doe’s ID so they could prove it was him and after the teen complied, there was no response for a week, the family claims. (...) Finally on Jan. 28, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn’t be taking down the material, which had already racked up over 167,000 views and 2,223 retweets, the suit states. “Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” the response reads, according to the lawsuit.
    - kenjackson 6y ago
      We still don't know what Twitter knows. It's not even clear if Twitter gave a more comprehensive reason. That said, if we assume what the accuser said and implied is true, then Twitter was criminally negligent IMO (IANAL). But I guess we'll find out in court.

jes 6y ago

We need effective regulation of these platforms. The regulation must be forward-looking. Trying to respond after a social media company has harmed the public, say by hosting illegal content, is not good enough. Social media companies cannot be allowed to say "Oh, sorry Congress, we made a mistake. We have now fixed it and it won't happen again." It might be that we need an agency like the FCC to regulate the internal operations of these companies and bring about true shared decision making. Attempts to exclude regulatory authorities from meetings should result in criminal charges and prison time for repeat offenders.

phnofive 6y ago

The lawsuit digs into the details of the timeline - from initial report by the plaintiff to removal of the content took nine days (with the help of law enforcement) - which makes me wonder how much merit there is to the suit, Twitter’s fumble notwithstanding.

Bud 6y ago

So we're posting sensationalist, hyper-inflated claptrap from the Murdoch-rag NY Post on Hacker News now? Let's not, instead. If this is really a story, and if that headline is really justified, then a more reliable source can be found. Set phasers to flag and fire.

edbob 6y ago
The Hunter Biden laptop story has been confirmed by witnesses and the cryptographic signatures on the email, while not a single shred of evidence that it's a "plant" has been found. This should give the NYPost a huge boost in credibility over the media outlets that falsely claim that it was a plant. This would (sadly) make the NYPost one of the more reputable media outlets that we have. Besides that, the lawsuit is readily available: https://www.scribd.com/document/491614044/Doe-v-Twitter https://www.scribd.com/document/491614044/Doe-v-Twitter
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- objectivetruth 6y ago
  "the cryptographic signatures on the email" <--? Like, there were TLS headers in an email client on the laptop that were confirmed to be on a server somewhere? Authenticated by a neutral forensics expert? Or are you saying Hunter Biden using GPG or PGP to encrypt/sign all of his email and the emails were authenticated that way by a neutral forensics expert? Because my understanding is that Giuliani never actually released the actual data, and that the FBI itself has the laptop. "confirmed by witnesses?" <-- the guy in the tam o'shanter hat on Fox News this week? Also, I didn't see any media outlets report that "it was a plant," just reporting that the FBI was investigating the situation.

throwawaysea 6y ago

I've noticed that Twitter is very arbitrary in terms of what they moderate and don't moderate. I've seen accounts for antifa groups or other groups engaged in criminality and violence several times, and no action has been taken on my reports. Invariably, the reports that aren't acted upon are ones involving groups that align with left-leaning political sentiments. This type of selective enforcement of rules is extremely unjust, and I am not at all surprised to see this inconsistent enforcement in this instance either.

35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
Funny, a common refrain of those very accounts is "Twitter overmoderates left wing accounts and does nothing with right wing hate speech". I think this doesn't point to Twitter being arbitrary; instead, I think it points to Twitter doing absolutely nothing until its hand is forced.

javajosh 6y ago

I remember a story about someone getting arrested for "child porn" going through an airport when some TSA agent found a video of a mans kids taking a bath on his phone. I'm not sure what happened in that case, but it has made me a) hesitant to take similar video and photos of my kids (even though bathtime is really fun and I want memories! My parents have plenty of bathtime pics of me as a kid, and I'm glad!), and b) a lot more skeptical whenever I hear someone claim "child porn". Similar to how "registered sex offender" has lost a great deal of weight since apparently cities around the country apply this label to drunk people pissing on buildings. This doesn't invalidate ALL such labels, it only means that the label itself is NOT ENOUGH for me to assume I know what happened. In short, "the system" has lost its credibility with me. (The same applies to other labels like "convicted felon" or "ever arrested". The ease with which these labels are applied, especially as the result of a corrupt plea bargain culture, and a society where all LEOs have a "marshal law bubble" around them, ruin the effect for me. And I wish it ruined the effect for more people.)

colpabar 6y ago
It seems pretty clear you did not read the article, so here The federal suit, filed Wednesday by the victim and his mother in the Northern District of California, alleges Twitter made money off the clips, which showed a 13-year-old engaged in sex acts and are a form of child sexual abuse material, or child porn, the suit states. The teen — who is now 17 and lives in Florida — is identified only as John Doe and was between 13 and 14 years old when sex traffickers, posing as a 16-year-old female classmate, started chatting with him on Snapchat, the suit alleges. Doe and the traffickers allegedly exchanged nude photos before the conversation turned to blackmail: If the teen didn’t share more sexually graphic photos and videos, the explicit material he’d already sent would be shared with his “parents, coach, pastor” and others, the suit states. Doe, acting under duress, initially complied and sent videos of himself performing sex acts and was also told to include another child in his videos, which he did, the suit claims. Eventually, Doe blocked the traffickers and they stopped harassing him, but at some point in 2019, the videos surfaced on Twitter under two accounts that were known to share child sexual abuse material, court papers allege.
- 6y ago

throwawayosiu1 6y ago

ah, maybe it's time we deplatform Twitter no? maybe it's tongue in cheek but in all honesty, I find it extremely hypocritical that the Ayatollah of Iran, dis-information news organizations (esp those based in China) and now CP are fine on Twitter but god forbid some people on the right wing use the "#notmypresident" or "#learntocode" hashtags - both of which were extensively used by the left in 2016 without any repercussions what so ever. I don't mind Twitter having it's policies (Infact I support it)- but selective enforcement of said policies is the issue.

fabbari 6y ago
I just checked: there are thousands of tweets with the #notmypresident hashtag. Not sure why you're not seeing them. Care to elaborate?
- throwawayosiu1 6y ago
  Weird, While I currently see none, I do see them logged out though. Thanks for the heads-up. Looks like I might not be seeing the full picture logged in.
  - dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
    Maybe you’ve used the “muted words” setting sometime in the last to hide the hashtag?

DanBC 6y ago

I have to say, I don't quite understand why services find it so difficult to remove this material. This has been a long standing problem with Twitter. They've improved a bit, but there's still problems. Young people approach these platforms and say "here are some images of child sexual abuse that you're hosting. I know they're CSE because I'm the subject of the photos and I was <18 at the time". The platforms sometimes ignore them. Children are then stuck, not knowing how to get this "child porn"[1] taken down. We need to help young people understand what routes are then available to them. 1) Write to the legal department. Twitter does not make this easy. Their "contact us" form doesn't have a section for "I want to report CSE material". https://help.twitter.com/en/contact-us https://help.twitter.com/en/contact-us But the post addresses are: Twitter, Inc. c/o Trust & Safety - Legal Policy 1355 Market Street, Suite 900 San Francisco, CA 94103 Twitter International Company c/o Trust & Safety - Legal Policy One Cumberland Place Fenian Street Dublin 2 D02 AX07 Ireland 2) Contact their local law enforcement office, and point them to this page (for Twitter, but all services should have something similar) https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-law-enforcement-support https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-law-e... 3) Contact IWF or CEOP. IWF will generate hashes of the images and Twitter will, eventually, use those hashes to remove the images. This will take some time. https://www.iwf.org.uk/ https://www.iwf.org.uk/ [1] I'm only using that term for the Google search term.

tomjen3 6y ago
If they know they are hosting CP, are they legally responsible for it?
- worldofmatthew 6y ago
  I know some people cited section 223, allowing for prison for up to two years and or fined.

kevwil 6y ago

Moderation seems to be a very slippery slope. IMHO there's no way to truly win; policies eventually trend toward either absolute free speech or blatant censorship. This is the critical flaw in social media, as either trend is problematic. "The only way to win the game is not to play."

stretchcat 6y ago
Moderation of this sort of content is so far away from any slope, it may as well be Flatland.

sonotmyname 6y ago

My wife has done some work with child exploitation organizations around this exact problem. Sadly, this is not a surprise at all. I’d venture that maybe 5% of the posts they report are removed, and the offending accounts are essentially never punished. To make matters worse, given that pedophilia and child porn is now tied up with QAnon, some of her peers have started to have their accounts banned when they report this stuff, as apparently they’re being caught up in an anti-conspiracy filter. Sigh...

teorema 6y ago

I feel increasingly lonely in wanting some kind of common carrier status social media platform. If not Twitter then a decentralized open source one.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

NYPost didn't bother linking to the complaint or vetting any of the details of the case. Complaint: https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Doe-v-Twitter_FiledComplaint_012021.pdf https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Doe-v-T... Case history: https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/37985226/Doe_v_Twitter,_Inc https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/37985226/Doe_v_Twit... The parties bringing the suit include The National Center on Sexual Exploitation. They are (unsurprisingly) an anti-porn org, formerly known as Morality in Media. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Exploitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Expl...

pardonmesir 6y ago
NYPost is just about the worst “mainstream” publication available and anything they’ve ever done devalues the technologies which transmit it and degrades the minds that consume it. Unfortunate to see them linked & highly ranked on HN.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  The problems with NYP here is that their coverage is lazy and inept. That few details I added were the minimum that belonged in this story - and it was far from everything that was needed. I'm not calling out the NYP here. Nearly every US news org is equally inept and lazy, no matter their ideology (real or perceived). I acknowledge that not all orgs are like that. And often disappointing news outlets sometimes perform absolutely brilliant journalism (eg: Panama Papers). But most basic reporting is just put out there, without even minimal vetting of details. We've long deserved better.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

NotChina 6y ago

Inconsistency with a wordy explanation.