7 ms·

Australia: Sex consent app proposal sparks backlash

39 points by throwmemoney 6y ago

TheChaplain 6y ago
This kind of app already exist in Sweden; https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.librasamtycke https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.librasamty...
phs318u 6y ago
This is a bit of a hot topic in Australia - and the world (rightly so). A sampling of news articles in the last week: https://www.theage.com.au/search?text=consent https://www.theage.com.au/search?text=consent With respect to the idea of consent via app - it's simply a dumb idea. People can change their mind, use of the app can be forced, then there's the whole tracking and data privacy issues (the slut-shaming potential of this data can't be overstated, especially in a courtroom context. "But your record shows you consented to 5 other sexual liasons in the last 3 days"). Consent is given continually and can be withdrawn instantly. If in doubt whether you have consent, then you probably don't. So ask (again) or stop.
- selfishgene 6y ago
  The lawyer in me asks why would a woman who has consented to 5 other sexual liaisons in the last 3 days be any more entitled to hide the true nature of her sexual behavior from the jury than let's say a member of the LGBTQ community who was involved in a sexual assault case? It can just as easily be argued that the app which this police officer is proposing in the article is designed to help precisely this type of woman. Of course details matter. Perhaps an audio recording of the entire encounter that is uploaded to the cloud and deleted after a pre-specified period of time, where both parties give consent orally and report how much alcohol they have consumed in the past several hours, would be a more practical solution to protect the "sexually adventurous" type of woman that the OP is describing here.
- cesarosum 6y ago
  > it's simply a dumb idea. Agreed. It's laughable. Dave Chappelle even parodied a similar concept (The Love Contract) on Chappelle's Show. edit: the idea was actually called The Love Contract.
  - runeks 6y ago
    https://youtu.be/kgEvkwfVJS4 https://youtu.be/kgEvkwfVJS4
- mam2 6y ago
  Yeah. I feel no one is able to realize that at the end of the day, the bottom line is that there will NEVER exist a way to PROVE consent without doubt. Even if you say yes you could say no later. Even if you have marks, it could be some weird rough sex / kink thing. Am i really the only one to see it ?
  - krageon 6y ago
    Part of being human and interacting with other humans is a certain level of uncertainty. To a lot of people, uncertainty is fundamentally scary and unacceptable. They look at other people (and to some extent themselves) and hate what they see there. Then they try to deny that essential nature through exerting more and more control over what they see. Fundamentally, I think it is indicative of a failing in modern society. These folks have somehow managed to grow up to hate their emotions and those of other people, and now spend a large part of their life trying to murder them whenever they see them. It's immature and destructive and we owe it to each other to do better.
    - 7952 6y ago
      Even if you do everything right you can still end up hurting someone. And that should feel bad, regardless of what you intended. I think taking responsibility for that potential harm is just part of being a grown up. You have to accept your own vulnerability. And hurting others is bad regardless of technicalities.
      - Dracophoenix 6y ago
        No reasonable person would be a living martyr for someone else's sensibilities. The world you're asking for is one where few would want to involve themselves with others for fear of stepping on someone else's toes. While one can be understanding, one is not obliged carry out this "responsibility" of living for others or with others' beliefs in mind.
    - mam2 6y ago
      You are too judgmental. Rape id a real thing and it destroys people. The intention of the app is good. Its just not gonna work
- oilbagz 6y ago
  >People can change their mind So, a new era of abstinence is ahead of us. There is simply no other way for anyone to feel safe than to simply abstain. Personally I'm okay with this, but I know a lot of teenagers who grew up thinking sex is an important facet of their identity who will disagree... Frankly, though, I think a more conservative society which treats sex with a lot more respect than the current shit-show, is definitely in order.
  - neilsense 6y ago
    Or sex work is going to go be very lucrative as casual sexual relationships incur more of a tax if there is even the slightest bit of confusion on consent (not to mention the fact that most people have alcohol in them, some have drugs, others just have bad experiences and carry regrets...).
  - rodgerd 6y ago
    Or you could - and I know this is a novel idea - treat people well and not be rapey.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. This is classic internet flamebait complete with snark—exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do in HN threads. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: it unfortunately looks like you've been doing this repeatedly. That's not ok, and we ban such accounts for what ought to be obvious reasons. Please stick to the rules from now on.
    - oilbagz 6y ago
      Its not just a matter of 'not being rapey' - its a matter of agency over the sexual act. If you get consent from your partner, have sex with them, and then your partner changes their mind about it afterwards - for any reason they determine under their own agency, what is to be done to avoid the danger of being falsely accused of not having gained consent, other than to simply abstain? If consent can be retracted after the act, the act is not safe. So abstinence is the only answer. And really, this shift towards abstinence is an appropriate social response.
- Lazare 6y ago
  Agreed, 100%, to everything you said. Although on top of that, note also that consent is specifically for specific acts with a specific person (or people) in a certain context. Exact legal rules may vary over time and between places, and we may debate the exact comparative moral weights of different violations, but it should be clear to us all (I hope!) that consent to vaginal penetration is not consent to anal penetration; consent to sex with a condom is not consent to sex without a condom; consent to sex with someone whom you believe to be sober, disease free, and otherwise single is not consent to sex with someone who is not one (or more, or all) of those things. And those aren't just hypotheticals; plenty of arguments about consent hinge on those things; eg, two people consent to sex with a condom, sex is initiated with a condom, one person looks down partway through the act and realise the condom has been removed or fallen off, they start yelling stop, but it takes some time before their partner actually stops, and now a judge and jury are trying to resolved a factual debate over what was or was not said about condoms prior to the sexual encounter, who was or was not responsible for the condom being removed and/or falling off, how long precisely it took between the call to "stop" and when the partner actually stopped, how long a reasonable person in that situation should be expected to take to realise consent had been withdrawn, and whether or not one person actually spent a significant amount of time consciously choosing to penetrate someone they were aware (or should have been aware) was no longer consenting, etc. And then to take all that and think a EULA-style checkbox in an app will actually help any of that? At best it'll do nothing; more likely it'll confuse the situation and make mistakes and miscommunication more likely.
- m12k 6y ago
  I agree with all points - giving blanket consent up front misses the point entirely. But I've been thinking if it's possible to flip the idea on its head: Make a kind of "sex partner review escrow service". What if instead of granting consent, the app allowed you to designate a person that is allowed to 'review' you. Basically saying "I give this person the right to call me out as a sexual predator" and get the same in return. That way it'll be what they think about the encounter afterward that matters. Reviews aren't perfect, and they won't catch someone mostly well-behaved who only occasionally sexually assaults [1]. But as it is, there are serial-perpetrators out there who get away with it, because there's no 'background check' for dating, and the only remedy is if a community around a known predator keeps trying to warn each new girl he tries to get with - which is indistinguishable from slander, and can just as well be used to ruin someone's life based on a single lie. So maybe an app could actually help with that? Make an 'official' paper trail so your sexual behavior, good or bad, is on the record. The technology could enforce various things - e.g. the review could be 'locked in' after a couple days, so you can't change it weeks later due to a bad breakup (it wouldn't even need to be published or sent to a server, a cryptographic hash would be all it takes to make it possible to verify later that the review wasn't tampered with). And by only allowing 'authorized' reviews, you avoid the possibility of brigading. Using technology to deal with a sensitive issue, and sensitive data like this isn't easy - and doing so would require a very careful design about what is visible to whom under which circumstances (not unlike the recent contact tracing systems in iOS and Android). But I feel like a legal grey-zone like this, where the courts continuously fail to help women that have been raped, that calls for more creative solutions, even if they don't solve the problem completely. With a consent app, each person 'signs away' their right to call the other person out, but with an app like this, the opposite is true, you give weight to the other person's voice, and I think that's worth exploring. [1] https://xkcd.com/325/ https://xkcd.com/325/
f6v 6y ago
And here I thought Amazon's "Upload" was just a fantasy...
harry8 6y ago
Everyone got to the correct conclusion about this in seconds. If only they'd do the same when some bone-headed policeman or similar says something equally stupid such as "we must weaken encryption" All the same reasons.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
young_unixer 6y ago
(Off topic) Am I the only one who thinks the whole world is absolutely crazy right now? Like, in general, nothing seems to make sense anymore. When did I get transported into a parallel reality? I think it was 5 years ago after that LSD trip. Ever since then, things are getting increasingly weird /rant
- lumberingjack 6y ago
  There's people in the thread that want to start a blanket policy in the opposite direction making sure everyone who's having sex is reviewing everyone else after.
- techer 6y ago
  “In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.” Robert Anton Wilson
- e-master 6y ago
  I keep asking the same question quite often also, so I guess the answer to your question is no, you’re not the only one, though not sure if it will make you feel any better.
- mFixman 6y ago
  The world hasn't changed. The way you consume media did. Here's a thought exercise: treat every news article that talks about "proposal" or "suggestion" as a low-quality personal blog. Or even better: treat everything on the Internet as false and trust only what you have seen in real life. The world becomes more clear when you realise that flat earthers don't really exist.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    I would argue that by changing the way we consume media at a global scale, we are actually changing the world quite a lot.
- eru 6y ago
  > Am I the only one who thinks the whole world is absolutely crazy right now? Why the whole world? Humanity ain't homogeneous. Perhaps you might benefit from changing your bubble (or echo chamber). See eg https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu.htm... and https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/make_your_own_b.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/make_your_own_b.htm... Or for a more drastic step, consider moving to a place that's more aligned with what you like.
skissane 6y ago
This isn't a serious proposal. It is just a "thought bubble" that the NSW Police Commissioner shared with the media. I reckon he regrets making the suggestion. It appears that nobody thinks it is a good idea except for him. And maybe he's learnt the hard way: nothing wrong with brainstorming and coming up with new ideas, but media interviews are not the right context to do that in.
- ENGNR 6y ago
  You’d hope the police commissioner had a better grip on the fundamentals of those crimes though, it’s kind of his job
  - skissane 6y ago
    He's been in the news a bit lately and the stories haven't been very positive. Before this, it was a controversy over the conflict of interest involved in his cushy appointment to the board of directors of one of Australia's major sporting leagues (the Australian Rugby League Commission). I wonder if the less-than-positive press is threatening his continuing in the role of police commissioner. At some point the politicians are going to start to think he is too much of a liability (if they haven't already).
- cam_l 6y ago
  I think the issue with the suggestion is that it shows that he thinks the more serious issue is the accusations rather than the assaults themselves. And.. maybe the NSW police could have used a consent app before they started illegally strip searching minors at music festivals.
acatton 6y ago
This is solution-ism almost reaching its peak. Computer chips will not solve societal problems.
gerdesj 6y ago
"Thousands of young women have detailed their experience of sexual assault during their schooling years - with many noting they weren't certain of what constituted rape." "Fix" the above first along with a string of other problems. Then an app might be appropriate but I very much doubt it.
eric4smith 6y ago
App is a great idea. But in practice with your pants halfway down... hard to implement. The fact is that consent can be withdrawn long after the act for a variety of reasons. Let’s get folks.
timwaagh 6y ago
I think it will be used to squeeze guys with less intelligence or perhaps guys who are naive for a lot of cash. I do not think the rape problem which is already pretty well addressed by laws is worth 'solving' by handing women a tool to blackmail guys. But then again if people truly want positive consent, it's actually the only way to do it. In that light recent changes to rape laws across the world to things similar to positive consent can be viewed as implying that this system should exist.
deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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skohan 6y ago
I have a theory that these kinds of proposals are driven by an unbalanced view of the nature of human sexuality. In other words, if you are someone who works with victims of sexual assault and sexual violence, you would have so much exposure to all the ways in which sex can go wrong that it would be easy to lose perspective on the fact that probably a vast, vast majority of sexual interactions between adults are probably perfectly fine and healthy. Im not saying consent is not an issue which should not be taken seriously, but I think the effort to bring formalized tracking and regulation into sex - one of the most natural base and human behaviors besides eating and sleeping - seems like something you would do if you want to treat all sexuality on the terms of the worst examples of sexuality.
- throwawayhehe 6y ago
  On college campuses in the US, approximately 1 out 4 young women report being "sexually assaulted" during their undergraduate years. In which case, your claim "that probably a vast, vast majority of sexual interactions between adults are probably perfectly fine and healthy" may be understating the risk here. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_sexual_assault#:~:text=The%20victims%20of%20such%20assaults,during%20their%20time%20in%20college https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_sexual_assault#:~:text=....
  - skohan 6y ago
    There is some debate[1] around how this statistic is interpreted, but I am not an expert on the matter so I would not challenge it. Still I believe even if we do take it as true that 1/4 of young women will experience sexual assault during their undergraduate years, this would not disprove my assertion. 1. It could be the case that many of these young women have many, many healthy sexual encounters during university, and one incident would still put them in that statistic, but it could still hold true that a vast majority of overall sexual encounters are unproblematic. 2. Undergraduates in their late teens and early 20's who are still learning how to navigate lives as sexual beings - in a permissive social environment lubricated by alcohol - are likely at an outsized risk of encountering grey areas of consent, or finding themselves in bad situations they haven't learned how to avoid or extricate themselves from. I don't know that this statistic should be generalized to the population as a whole. Now please understand that I am not trivializing this statistic. I can believe that sexual assault on campuses is a prevalent and serious issue, and causes serious harm to the people who fall victim to it. In this environment, I believe it is warranted to take these matters seriously, and put a strong emphasis on explicit, verbal, enthusiastic consent. However, I think it is probably not warranted for a happily married couple, or two people in their thirties meeting for a date to operate under the same set of assumptions as a couple 19 year olds at a frat party. [1] https://time.com/2934500/1-in-5%E2%80%82campus-sexual-assault-statistic/ https://time.com/2934500/1-in-5%E2%80%82campus-sexual-assaul...
searchableguy 6y ago
Could you detect consent through tracking brain waves? There are few classrooms in china using bands to detect whether kids are focusing on the material or not. I wonder if that can be extended to consent too if it works. That will solve the problem of continuous consent. The application of this stretches beyond the bedroom. It might be used in court, research, experiments, medical treatment, contracts, notarization, etc. You could add it as a layer in security or authorization systems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLsHI8aV0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLsHI8aV0g That seems like an interesting problem to solve.
dgellow 6y ago
Blockchain can fix this! Imagine what smart-consent-contract could do. You set your rules, everybody can see it but you’re in full control and do not have the government in between. Now that’s real consent for the 21st century! (I’m joking, please don’t take it as an actual idea and make it real, the world is already crazy enough as it is)
- eru 6y ago
  To take you more seriously than you wanted to be: A big part of human courtship and flirting is plausible deniability. Alas, that's exactly the opposite of what your (or any formal) solution would support.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    Of course that would be a terrible idea. I’m poking at the absurdity of the app suggestion.
gattr 6y ago
This idea is fully escalated in J. Dukaj's 2001 novel "Black oceans" [1]. > Dukaj extrapolates from the current trend of increasing lawsuits and political correctness: in his world many people willingly live under constant mass surveillance of the New Etiquette (NEti), which registers all their actions so that they couldn't be falsely accused of some "personal offense crime". That includes people's apartments and them having sex. And of course the NEti records are sealed and secure - theoretically. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charne_oceany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charne_oceany
- readflaggedcomm 6y ago
  It also reminds me of the Australian society in Marshall Brain's "Manna", which was much more creepy than the protagonist let on.
jojobas 6y ago
The solution is obvious: one should only have sex under supervision of law enforcement professionals, who would ask whether there's still consent every 15 seconds, otherwise it's rape.
pdkl95 6y ago
Man's Lawyer: OK. Let's see. We're talking about a standard one night arrangement, right? Woman: I guess. Yeah. Man's Lawyer: So we'll say a dinner, complete sexual encounter, full penetraton, optional episode in the morning, right? Woman: Just slow down. Man: You know I personnally thought it'd be nice. Woman: Let me see this. My lawyer better see this one. For instance... the oral clause... seems a little sticky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urS8GmwmeWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urS8GmwmeWQ Cherry 2000 may be a silly mess of a movie, but its depiction of the lawyerification of dating might have been surprisingly prescient.

39 points by throwmemoney 6y ago

This kind of app already exist in Sweden; https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.librasamtycke https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.librasamty...

phs318u 6y ago

This is a bit of a hot topic in Australia - and the world (rightly so). A sampling of news articles in the last week: https://www.theage.com.au/search?text=consent https://www.theage.com.au/search?text=consent With respect to the idea of consent via app - it's simply a dumb idea. People can change their mind, use of the app can be forced, then there's the whole tracking and data privacy issues (the slut-shaming potential of this data can't be overstated, especially in a courtroom context. "But your record shows you consented to 5 other sexual liasons in the last 3 days"). Consent is given continually and can be withdrawn instantly. If in doubt whether you have consent, then you probably don't. So ask (again) or stop.

selfishgene 6y ago
The lawyer in me asks why would a woman who has consented to 5 other sexual liaisons in the last 3 days be any more entitled to hide the true nature of her sexual behavior from the jury than let's say a member of the LGBTQ community who was involved in a sexual assault case? It can just as easily be argued that the app which this police officer is proposing in the article is designed to help precisely this type of woman. Of course details matter. Perhaps an audio recording of the entire encounter that is uploaded to the cloud and deleted after a pre-specified period of time, where both parties give consent orally and report how much alcohol they have consumed in the past several hours, would be a more practical solution to protect the "sexually adventurous" type of woman that the OP is describing here.
cesarosum 6y ago
> it's simply a dumb idea. Agreed. It's laughable. Dave Chappelle even parodied a similar concept (The Love Contract) on Chappelle's Show. edit: the idea was actually called The Love Contract.
- runeks 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/kgEvkwfVJS4 https://youtu.be/kgEvkwfVJS4
mam2 6y ago
Yeah. I feel no one is able to realize that at the end of the day, the bottom line is that there will NEVER exist a way to PROVE consent without doubt. Even if you say yes you could say no later. Even if you have marks, it could be some weird rough sex / kink thing. Am i really the only one to see it ?
- krageon 6y ago
  Part of being human and interacting with other humans is a certain level of uncertainty. To a lot of people, uncertainty is fundamentally scary and unacceptable. They look at other people (and to some extent themselves) and hate what they see there. Then they try to deny that essential nature through exerting more and more control over what they see. Fundamentally, I think it is indicative of a failing in modern society. These folks have somehow managed to grow up to hate their emotions and those of other people, and now spend a large part of their life trying to murder them whenever they see them. It's immature and destructive and we owe it to each other to do better.
  - 7952 6y ago
    Even if you do everything right you can still end up hurting someone. And that should feel bad, regardless of what you intended. I think taking responsibility for that potential harm is just part of being a grown up. You have to accept your own vulnerability. And hurting others is bad regardless of technicalities.
    - Dracophoenix 6y ago
      No reasonable person would be a living martyr for someone else's sensibilities. The world you're asking for is one where few would want to involve themselves with others for fear of stepping on someone else's toes. While one can be understanding, one is not obliged carry out this "responsibility" of living for others or with others' beliefs in mind.
  - mam2 6y ago
    You are too judgmental. Rape id a real thing and it destroys people. The intention of the app is good. Its just not gonna work
oilbagz 6y ago
>People can change their mind So, a new era of abstinence is ahead of us. There is simply no other way for anyone to feel safe than to simply abstain. Personally I'm okay with this, but I know a lot of teenagers who grew up thinking sex is an important facet of their identity who will disagree... Frankly, though, I think a more conservative society which treats sex with a lot more respect than the current shit-show, is definitely in order.
- neilsense 6y ago
  Or sex work is going to go be very lucrative as casual sexual relationships incur more of a tax if there is even the slightest bit of confusion on consent (not to mention the fact that most people have alcohol in them, some have drugs, others just have bad experiences and carry regrets...).
- rodgerd 6y ago
  Or you could - and I know this is a novel idea - treat people well and not be rapey.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. This is classic internet flamebait complete with snark—exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do in HN threads. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: it unfortunately looks like you've been doing this repeatedly. That's not ok, and we ban such accounts for what ought to be obvious reasons. Please stick to the rules from now on.
  - oilbagz 6y ago
    Its not just a matter of 'not being rapey' - its a matter of agency over the sexual act. If you get consent from your partner, have sex with them, and then your partner changes their mind about it afterwards - for any reason they determine under their own agency, what is to be done to avoid the danger of being falsely accused of not having gained consent, other than to simply abstain? If consent can be retracted after the act, the act is not safe. So abstinence is the only answer. And really, this shift towards abstinence is an appropriate social response.
Lazare 6y ago
Agreed, 100%, to everything you said. Although on top of that, note also that consent is specifically for specific acts with a specific person (or people) in a certain context. Exact legal rules may vary over time and between places, and we may debate the exact comparative moral weights of different violations, but it should be clear to us all (I hope!) that consent to vaginal penetration is not consent to anal penetration; consent to sex with a condom is not consent to sex without a condom; consent to sex with someone whom you believe to be sober, disease free, and otherwise single is not consent to sex with someone who is not one (or more, or all) of those things. And those aren't just hypotheticals; plenty of arguments about consent hinge on those things; eg, two people consent to sex with a condom, sex is initiated with a condom, one person looks down partway through the act and realise the condom has been removed or fallen off, they start yelling stop, but it takes some time before their partner actually stops, and now a judge and jury are trying to resolved a factual debate over what was or was not said about condoms prior to the sexual encounter, who was or was not responsible for the condom being removed and/or falling off, how long precisely it took between the call to "stop" and when the partner actually stopped, how long a reasonable person in that situation should be expected to take to realise consent had been withdrawn, and whether or not one person actually spent a significant amount of time consciously choosing to penetrate someone they were aware (or should have been aware) was no longer consenting, etc. And then to take all that and think a EULA-style checkbox in an app will actually help any of that? At best it'll do nothing; more likely it'll confuse the situation and make mistakes and miscommunication more likely.
m12k 6y ago
I agree with all points - giving blanket consent up front misses the point entirely. But I've been thinking if it's possible to flip the idea on its head: Make a kind of "sex partner review escrow service". What if instead of granting consent, the app allowed you to designate a person that is allowed to 'review' you. Basically saying "I give this person the right to call me out as a sexual predator" and get the same in return. That way it'll be what they think about the encounter afterward that matters. Reviews aren't perfect, and they won't catch someone mostly well-behaved who only occasionally sexually assaults [1]. But as it is, there are serial-perpetrators out there who get away with it, because there's no 'background check' for dating, and the only remedy is if a community around a known predator keeps trying to warn each new girl he tries to get with - which is indistinguishable from slander, and can just as well be used to ruin someone's life based on a single lie. So maybe an app could actually help with that? Make an 'official' paper trail so your sexual behavior, good or bad, is on the record. The technology could enforce various things - e.g. the review could be 'locked in' after a couple days, so you can't change it weeks later due to a bad breakup (it wouldn't even need to be published or sent to a server, a cryptographic hash would be all it takes to make it possible to verify later that the review wasn't tampered with). And by only allowing 'authorized' reviews, you avoid the possibility of brigading. Using technology to deal with a sensitive issue, and sensitive data like this isn't easy - and doing so would require a very careful design about what is visible to whom under which circumstances (not unlike the recent contact tracing systems in iOS and Android). But I feel like a legal grey-zone like this, where the courts continuously fail to help women that have been raped, that calls for more creative solutions, even if they don't solve the problem completely. With a consent app, each person 'signs away' their right to call the other person out, but with an app like this, the opposite is true, you give weight to the other person's voice, and I think that's worth exploring. [1] https://xkcd.com/325/ https://xkcd.com/325/

f6v 6y ago

And here I thought Amazon's "Upload" was just a fantasy...

harry8 6y ago

Everyone got to the correct conclusion about this in seconds. If only they'd do the same when some bone-headed policeman or similar says something equally stupid such as "we must weaken encryption" All the same reasons.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

young_unixer 6y ago

(Off topic) Am I the only one who thinks the whole world is absolutely crazy right now? Like, in general, nothing seems to make sense anymore. When did I get transported into a parallel reality? I think it was 5 years ago after that LSD trip. Ever since then, things are getting increasingly weird /rant

lumberingjack 6y ago
There's people in the thread that want to start a blanket policy in the opposite direction making sure everyone who's having sex is reviewing everyone else after.
techer 6y ago
“In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.” Robert Anton Wilson
e-master 6y ago
I keep asking the same question quite often also, so I guess the answer to your question is no, you’re not the only one, though not sure if it will make you feel any better.
mFixman 6y ago
The world hasn't changed. The way you consume media did. Here's a thought exercise: treat every news article that talks about "proposal" or "suggestion" as a low-quality personal blog. Or even better: treat everything on the Internet as false and trust only what you have seen in real life. The world becomes more clear when you realise that flat earthers don't really exist.
- dgellow 6y ago
  I would argue that by changing the way we consume media at a global scale, we are actually changing the world quite a lot.
eru 6y ago
> Am I the only one who thinks the whole world is absolutely crazy right now? Why the whole world? Humanity ain't homogeneous. Perhaps you might benefit from changing your bubble (or echo chamber). See eg https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu.htm... and https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/make_your_own_b.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/make_your_own_b.htm... Or for a more drastic step, consider moving to a place that's more aligned with what you like.

skissane 6y ago

This isn't a serious proposal. It is just a "thought bubble" that the NSW Police Commissioner shared with the media. I reckon he regrets making the suggestion. It appears that nobody thinks it is a good idea except for him. And maybe he's learnt the hard way: nothing wrong with brainstorming and coming up with new ideas, but media interviews are not the right context to do that in.

ENGNR 6y ago
You’d hope the police commissioner had a better grip on the fundamentals of those crimes though, it’s kind of his job
- skissane 6y ago
  He's been in the news a bit lately and the stories haven't been very positive. Before this, it was a controversy over the conflict of interest involved in his cushy appointment to the board of directors of one of Australia's major sporting leagues (the Australian Rugby League Commission). I wonder if the less-than-positive press is threatening his continuing in the role of police commissioner. At some point the politicians are going to start to think he is too much of a liability (if they haven't already).
cam_l 6y ago
I think the issue with the suggestion is that it shows that he thinks the more serious issue is the accusations rather than the assaults themselves. And.. maybe the NSW police could have used a consent app before they started illegally strip searching minors at music festivals.

acatton 6y ago

This is solution-ism almost reaching its peak. Computer chips will not solve societal problems.

gerdesj 6y ago

"Thousands of young women have detailed their experience of sexual assault during their schooling years - with many noting they weren't certain of what constituted rape." "Fix" the above first along with a string of other problems. Then an app might be appropriate but I very much doubt it.

eric4smith 6y ago

App is a great idea. But in practice with your pants halfway down... hard to implement. The fact is that consent can be withdrawn long after the act for a variety of reasons. Let’s get folks.

timwaagh 6y ago

I think it will be used to squeeze guys with less intelligence or perhaps guys who are naive for a lot of cash. I do not think the rape problem which is already pretty well addressed by laws is worth 'solving' by handing women a tool to blackmail guys. But then again if people truly want positive consent, it's actually the only way to do it. In that light recent changes to rape laws across the world to things similar to positive consent can be viewed as implying that this system should exist.

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skohan 6y ago

I have a theory that these kinds of proposals are driven by an unbalanced view of the nature of human sexuality. In other words, if you are someone who works with victims of sexual assault and sexual violence, you would have so much exposure to all the ways in which sex can go wrong that it would be easy to lose perspective on the fact that probably a vast, vast majority of sexual interactions between adults are probably perfectly fine and healthy. Im not saying consent is not an issue which should not be taken seriously, but I think the effort to bring formalized tracking and regulation into sex - one of the most natural base and human behaviors besides eating and sleeping - seems like something you would do if you want to treat all sexuality on the terms of the worst examples of sexuality.

throwawayhehe 6y ago
On college campuses in the US, approximately 1 out 4 young women report being "sexually assaulted" during their undergraduate years. In which case, your claim "that probably a vast, vast majority of sexual interactions between adults are probably perfectly fine and healthy" may be understating the risk here. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_sexual_assault#:~:text=The%20victims%20of%20such%20assaults,during%20their%20time%20in%20college https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_sexual_assault#:~:text=....
- skohan 6y ago
  There is some debate[1] around how this statistic is interpreted, but I am not an expert on the matter so I would not challenge it. Still I believe even if we do take it as true that 1/4 of young women will experience sexual assault during their undergraduate years, this would not disprove my assertion. 1. It could be the case that many of these young women have many, many healthy sexual encounters during university, and one incident would still put them in that statistic, but it could still hold true that a vast majority of overall sexual encounters are unproblematic. 2. Undergraduates in their late teens and early 20's who are still learning how to navigate lives as sexual beings - in a permissive social environment lubricated by alcohol - are likely at an outsized risk of encountering grey areas of consent, or finding themselves in bad situations they haven't learned how to avoid or extricate themselves from. I don't know that this statistic should be generalized to the population as a whole. Now please understand that I am not trivializing this statistic. I can believe that sexual assault on campuses is a prevalent and serious issue, and causes serious harm to the people who fall victim to it. In this environment, I believe it is warranted to take these matters seriously, and put a strong emphasis on explicit, verbal, enthusiastic consent. However, I think it is probably not warranted for a happily married couple, or two people in their thirties meeting for a date to operate under the same set of assumptions as a couple 19 year olds at a frat party. [1] https://time.com/2934500/1-in-5%E2%80%82campus-sexual-assault-statistic/ https://time.com/2934500/1-in-5%E2%80%82campus-sexual-assaul...

searchableguy 6y ago

Could you detect consent through tracking brain waves? There are few classrooms in china using bands to detect whether kids are focusing on the material or not. I wonder if that can be extended to consent too if it works. That will solve the problem of continuous consent. The application of this stretches beyond the bedroom. It might be used in court, research, experiments, medical treatment, contracts, notarization, etc. You could add it as a layer in security or authorization systems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLsHI8aV0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLsHI8aV0g That seems like an interesting problem to solve.

dgellow 6y ago

Blockchain can fix this! Imagine what smart-consent-contract could do. You set your rules, everybody can see it but you’re in full control and do not have the government in between. Now that’s real consent for the 21st century! (I’m joking, please don’t take it as an actual idea and make it real, the world is already crazy enough as it is)

eru 6y ago
To take you more seriously than you wanted to be: A big part of human courtship and flirting is plausible deniability. Alas, that's exactly the opposite of what your (or any formal) solution would support.
- dgellow 6y ago
  Of course that would be a terrible idea. I’m poking at the absurdity of the app suggestion.

gattr 6y ago

This idea is fully escalated in J. Dukaj's 2001 novel "Black oceans" [1]. > Dukaj extrapolates from the current trend of increasing lawsuits and political correctness: in his world many people willingly live under constant mass surveillance of the New Etiquette (NEti), which registers all their actions so that they couldn't be falsely accused of some "personal offense crime". That includes people's apartments and them having sex. And of course the NEti records are sealed and secure - theoretically. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charne_oceany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charne_oceany

readflaggedcomm 6y ago
It also reminds me of the Australian society in Marshall Brain's "Manna", which was much more creepy than the protagonist let on.

jojobas 6y ago

The solution is obvious: one should only have sex under supervision of law enforcement professionals, who would ask whether there's still consent every 15 seconds, otherwise it's rape.

pdkl95 6y ago

Man's Lawyer: OK. Let's see. We're talking about a standard one night arrangement, right? Woman: I guess. Yeah. Man's Lawyer: So we'll say a dinner, complete sexual encounter, full penetraton, optional episode in the morning, right? Woman: Just slow down. Man: You know I personnally thought it'd be nice. Woman: Let me see this. My lawyer better see this one. For instance... the oral clause... seems a little sticky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urS8GmwmeWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urS8GmwmeWQ Cherry 2000 may be a silly mess of a movie, but its depiction of the lawyerification of dating might have been surprisingly prescient.