5 ms·

On the flip side, "think of the children" does not necessarily mean the argument is without merit. There are countless debates in which it is a valid point. Fo

by slg 5y ago

On the flip side, "think of the children" does not necessarily mean the argument is without merit. There are countless debates in which it is a valid point. For example, climate change is a big "think of the children" issue because the impact will be felt greater by children than by the people who are currently in power. I think some people have become too cynical and see a "think of the children" argument and reflexively take the opposite stance in order to be contrarian. It is basically the fallacy fallacy[1] that you see all over the place, especially in debates on the internet. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

croes 5y ago
That are different kind of children. In case of climate change it means the next generation of adults. In terms of cyber security it means actual children and is simply used to trigger protective instincts and make counter arguments seems cruel and suspicious. Especially because child porn isn't not the initial but followup crime. The initial one is the actual abuse which isn't prevented.
- slg 5y ago
  >That are different kind of children. In case of climate change it means the next generation of adults. In terms of cyber security it means actual children and is simply used to trigger protective instincts and make counter arguments seems cruel and suspicious. "Actual children" eventually become "the next generation of adults" so I'm not sure the point you are trying to make as you seem to be implying tomorrow's adults are more important than today's kids. Either way, society would be better if future adults weren't abused as kids. >Especially because child porn isn't not the initial but followup crime. The initial one is the actual abuse which isn't prevented. You are assuming that all the abuse would still occur and none of it is encouraged by the demand for that content. I don't know why we should make that assumption. What percentage of traditional porn would you guess is documenting sex that would be happening if there was no demand for that content?
  - anon9001 5y ago
    > Especially because child porn isn't not the initial but followup crime. The initial one is the actual abuse which isn't prevented. >> You are assuming that all the abuse would still occur and none of it is encouraged by the demand for that content. I don't know why we should make that assumption. There's near universal agreement that child abuse is wrong and should be stopped. Profiting off of child abuse is even more wrong. But how much CSAM detected on phones is going to be because the user engaged in commerce with CSAM? I think you'll have a few different cohorts caught by this process, but almost none of them will be producers/resellers/purchasers of CSAM content. I'd bet most of the CSAM detected will be from the occasional legal case that stems from teenagers sending explicit content to each other. Once that content is registered, any classmates who downloaded photos from group texts and backed them up to icloud without thinking about will be raided and prosecuted. Another group will be people who had CSAM planted maliciously, because this creates an easy vector for swatting if you can get photos onto someone's device. Not to mention the adversarial network attacks that have been on HN in the last few days about this. Also, because we can't inspect the CSAM database, it's quite likely that some percentage of what people thought was adult porn was actually underage. I see nude photos shared on forums all the time. I'm sure some people save those photos to their devices, and it's unknowable if the busty teen just an 18 year old that felt like sharing or revenge porn content from a 17 year old's CSAM case. Surely some porn addicts that have been saving every image they found attractive for years will get caught up in this. Even the group ostensibly being targeted by this technology is unlikely to help prevent actual child abuse. For example, someone might join a porn Telegram channel, be exposed to CSAM with or without realizing that's what it is, and save it to their device. People caught in this group probably do need some kind of mental help, which the criminal system will not provide. Piracy may create some demand, but it's still pretty far removed from the abuse. Out of this group, an even smaller fraction may have actually paid for CSAM material, which is the first group where you'd find unanimous support for law enforcement action. The people we all want to see locked up, those that actually abusing children, or those profiting/funding the abuse of children, are unlikely to be caught in this type of dragnet. I'd imagine that when Apple turns this feature on, it will immediately catch thousands of people in the dragnet, and almost none of them will be involved in the production or sale of CSAM. > I'm not saying Apple is definitively involved in some shady stuff, but from my perspective, it does look like NSA forced them to do some sort of file scanning backdoor and they came up with this "it's about saving the children" explanation, already successfully in use in oppressive countries. It does seem that way because it's just so hard to draw a line from "apple scans all your images to match previously known child abuse" to "child abuse is prevented". I think the absolute best outcome we can hope for here is that some people who purchased CSAM, essentially low-level users, will be discovered and prosecuted. Maybe that's a good thing, and perhaps it will remove thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars from the underground economy. But it hardly seems worth the cost to privacy and security if we never stop any actual child abuse.
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
> On the flip side, "think of the children" does not necessarily mean the argument is without merit. There are countless debates in which it is a valid point. For example, climate change is a big "think of the children" issue because the impact will be felt greater by children than by the people who are currently in power. It's funny you wrote this because you actually committed a straw man fallacy in your line of reasoning above. An argument of "Think of the children" generally means restricting something from dissemination, discussion, or presentation because it's availability or the process by which it is made available would be a negative children as they aren't fully grown and responsible adults. Restricting porn, or discussion or drugs or sexuality, or child porn laws all fit this. It does not literally mean doing anything positive because it will benefit a child. Saying that any argument that benefits children is a "think of the children" argument is a strawman fallacy. [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
- hvidgaard 5y ago
  > An argument of "Think of the children" generally means restricting something from dissemination, discussion, or presentation because it's availability or the process by which it is made available would be a negative children as they aren't fully grown and responsible adults. Restricting porn, or discussion or drugs or sexuality, or child porn laws all fit this. It does not literally mean doing anything positive because it will benefit a child. Says who? And the argument in question is actually more "if we don't do this, there might not be an liveable earth for our descendants" - you don't have to agree, but from their point of view its far from "doing anything positive because it will benefit a child".
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Says the people saying the term as shorthand to mean that, which includes the post that was being responded to.
- candiodari 5y ago
  > It does not literally mean doing anything positive because it will benefit a child. That, we don't do. When the state assumes, often through force, responsibility over children everyone seems happy that this is the result: http://web.archive.org/web/20210809061557/https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article238206754.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210809061557/https://www.kansas... We do lots of things with the state "to protect children". With one MAJOR exception: actually taking decent care of children dependent on the state. Which, to me, really calls into question all these efforts. The number of efforts attempting to "catch" various problem situations for kids, only to throw the kids found into state care, which is horribly bad. And whilst I understand that some home situations are indeed beyond horrible and kids need rescuing from them, if you actually go look at the stories of kids in state care, actual abuse is pretty rare. Actual abuse is much more commonly found in youth prisons than it is found in child services institutions. Poverty, mental problems and substance abuse by parents at home are the biggest problems (yes, each bigger than the stereotypical criminal reasons. And even the relatively small group of criminal kids outnumber actually physically abused kids 10-to-1. Kids abandoned by their parents, also a tiny group, far outnumber actually abused kids) It seems to me the whole "protecting kids" is just a 1000 major efforts to catch people in bad situations ... and punish them (situations often not their fault, especially poverty, or certainly not fully their fault). Then, because the kids involved are an annoying detail left behind when parents are punished like, they are ... well, first of all, deeply hidden, far from view. Needless to say, once hidden they are not taken care of very well at all. This is done so a thousand efforts, and the police and child services itself can continue focusing on the frontend and catching yet-another-new-kind-of-child-abuse to satisfy various interest groups. From the LGBTQ lobby (fortunately these days in the right direction: making sure kids are allowed to be LGBTQ, rather than as little as 10 years ago, punishing them for it) to saving money and/or trouble in schools (such as expensive adaptation of school buildings to handicaps), to helping courts enforce divorce settlements (when parents refuse to abide visitation rights for instance). But even with very serious child abuse you have to wonder: the child protection system is saturated with violence, drugs and even prostitution. That means the system is not capable of protecting children from violence, drugs or prostitution. But nobody seems to care about that. It seems clear that if the rule is introduced that the situation of the child must improve as a result of child protection or child protection must leave the child alone after 6 months or so, that it will shrink 90%+ in short order. Such a rule would have the enormous benefit that it would force child protection efforts to improve children's situations directly, rather than finding problems and throwing the kids found into an abyss. So no these efforts, from CSAM to ... are just to punish people for not abiding by mostly cultural standards. They are not about protecting kids at all. The most generous thing you can say is that they sometimes make it difficult to profit from abusing kids.
sennight 5y ago
It would be easier to take that seriously if other predictable consequences the next generation will have to deal with were given a tiny a fraction of that deference. Like a back breaking national debt, the razing of civil liberties, ever diminishing prospects of a quality of life comparable to their progenitors, etc.
- adrianN 5y ago
  The climate, once sufficiently changed, is much, much harder to change back than getting rid of national debt or getting civil liberties back.
  - CraigJPerry 5y ago
    I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Countries have quashed their debts and Governments have been overthrown with regularity throughout human history. No one has ever prevented a climate change induced event so far.
    - rutthenut 5y ago
      > No one has ever prevented a climate change induced event so far Well apparently the ban on CFCs has had a beneficial effect and the hole in the ozone layer is no longer the issue it had been
      - CraigJPerry 5y ago
        Yeah that’s a good one actually. I like it.
    - sennight 5y ago
      We stopped "global cooling" with very little difficulty in the 70s. Peak oil and overpopulation as well, all we had to do was nothing.
      - CraigJPerry 5y ago
pojzon 5y ago
Oil companies are switching away from production of petrol due to “think about children” aspect. But.. are shifting to increased production of plastic.. For now “think about children” means in 9/10 situations - “let me sell you some bullshit”. But I understand where you are comming from.
- xorcist 5y ago
  This has no basis in numbers unfortunately. World petroleum production is steadily increasing on a YoY basis, the only exception being the year with massive lockdowns world wide. There are no signs production will wind down in the short term. There are speculation but so far demand has been indefatigable.
littlestymaar 5y ago
> For example, climate change is a big "think of the children" issue because the impact will be felt greater by children than by the people who are currently in power. So they think. Many people currently in power will still be alive in 20 or 30 years and recent events have shown us how quickly the shit is coming at us…
bodge5000 5y ago
I don't think anyone is saying that it won't benefit children (at least not initially), the point is that the cost of doing so is high and it could easily lead to further costs which don't benefit children at all, perhaps even harms children. A good example is the argument for mass surveillance. Sure, if you know what everyone is up to at all times, you're probably going to be better at catching the baddies, but the loss in rights to everyone innocent is arguably unfair. To take it to its extremes, if you're goal is to simply put as many bad people in jail as possible, put everyone in jail.

by slg 5y ago

croes 5y ago

That are different kind of children. In case of climate change it means the next generation of adults. In terms of cyber security it means actual children and is simply used to trigger protective instincts and make counter arguments seems cruel and suspicious. Especially because child porn isn't not the initial but followup crime. The initial one is the actual abuse which isn't prevented.

slg 5y ago
>That are different kind of children. In case of climate change it means the next generation of adults. In terms of cyber security it means actual children and is simply used to trigger protective instincts and make counter arguments seems cruel and suspicious. "Actual children" eventually become "the next generation of adults" so I'm not sure the point you are trying to make as you seem to be implying tomorrow's adults are more important than today's kids. Either way, society would be better if future adults weren't abused as kids. >Especially because child porn isn't not the initial but followup crime. The initial one is the actual abuse which isn't prevented. You are assuming that all the abuse would still occur and none of it is encouraged by the demand for that content. I don't know why we should make that assumption. What percentage of traditional porn would you guess is documenting sex that would be happening if there was no demand for that content?
- anon9001 5y ago
  > Especially because child porn isn't not the initial but followup crime. The initial one is the actual abuse which isn't prevented. >> You are assuming that all the abuse would still occur and none of it is encouraged by the demand for that content. I don't know why we should make that assumption. There's near universal agreement that child abuse is wrong and should be stopped. Profiting off of child abuse is even more wrong. But how much CSAM detected on phones is going to be because the user engaged in commerce with CSAM? I think you'll have a few different cohorts caught by this process, but almost none of them will be producers/resellers/purchasers of CSAM content. I'd bet most of the CSAM detected will be from the occasional legal case that stems from teenagers sending explicit content to each other. Once that content is registered, any classmates who downloaded photos from group texts and backed them up to icloud without thinking about will be raided and prosecuted. Another group will be people who had CSAM planted maliciously, because this creates an easy vector for swatting if you can get photos onto someone's device. Not to mention the adversarial network attacks that have been on HN in the last few days about this. Also, because we can't inspect the CSAM database, it's quite likely that some percentage of what people thought was adult porn was actually underage. I see nude photos shared on forums all the time. I'm sure some people save those photos to their devices, and it's unknowable if the busty teen just an 18 year old that felt like sharing or revenge porn content from a 17 year old's CSAM case. Surely some porn addicts that have been saving every image they found attractive for years will get caught up in this. Even the group ostensibly being targeted by this technology is unlikely to help prevent actual child abuse. For example, someone might join a porn Telegram channel, be exposed to CSAM with or without realizing that's what it is, and save it to their device. People caught in this group probably do need some kind of mental help, which the criminal system will not provide. Piracy may create some demand, but it's still pretty far removed from the abuse. Out of this group, an even smaller fraction may have actually paid for CSAM material, which is the first group where you'd find unanimous support for law enforcement action. The people we all want to see locked up, those that actually abusing children, or those profiting/funding the abuse of children, are unlikely to be caught in this type of dragnet. I'd imagine that when Apple turns this feature on, it will immediately catch thousands of people in the dragnet, and almost none of them will be involved in the production or sale of CSAM. > I'm not saying Apple is definitively involved in some shady stuff, but from my perspective, it does look like NSA forced them to do some sort of file scanning backdoor and they came up with this "it's about saving the children" explanation, already successfully in use in oppressive countries. It does seem that way because it's just so hard to draw a line from "apple scans all your images to match previously known child abuse" to "child abuse is prevented". I think the absolute best outcome we can hope for here is that some people who purchased CSAM, essentially low-level users, will be discovered and prosecuted. Maybe that's a good thing, and perhaps it will remove thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars from the underground economy. But it hardly seems worth the cost to privacy and security if we never stop any actual child abuse.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago

> On the flip side, "think of the children" does not necessarily mean the argument is without merit. There are countless debates in which it is a valid point. For example, climate change is a big "think of the children" issue because the impact will be felt greater by children than by the people who are currently in power. It's funny you wrote this because you actually committed a straw man fallacy in your line of reasoning above. An argument of "Think of the children" generally means restricting something from dissemination, discussion, or presentation because it's availability or the process by which it is made available would be a negative children as they aren't fully grown and responsible adults. Restricting porn, or discussion or drugs or sexuality, or child porn laws all fit this. It does not literally mean doing anything positive because it will benefit a child. Saying that any argument that benefits children is a "think of the children" argument is a strawman fallacy. [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

hvidgaard 5y ago
> An argument of "Think of the children" generally means restricting something from dissemination, discussion, or presentation because it's availability or the process by which it is made available would be a negative children as they aren't fully grown and responsible adults. Restricting porn, or discussion or drugs or sexuality, or child porn laws all fit this. It does not literally mean doing anything positive because it will benefit a child. Says who? And the argument in question is actually more "if we don't do this, there might not be an liveable earth for our descendants" - you don't have to agree, but from their point of view its far from "doing anything positive because it will benefit a child".
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Says the people saying the term as shorthand to mean that, which includes the post that was being responded to.
candiodari 5y ago
> It does not literally mean doing anything positive because it will benefit a child. That, we don't do. When the state assumes, often through force, responsibility over children everyone seems happy that this is the result: http://web.archive.org/web/20210809061557/https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article238206754.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210809061557/https://www.kansas... We do lots of things with the state "to protect children". With one MAJOR exception: actually taking decent care of children dependent on the state. Which, to me, really calls into question all these efforts. The number of efforts attempting to "catch" various problem situations for kids, only to throw the kids found into state care, which is horribly bad. And whilst I understand that some home situations are indeed beyond horrible and kids need rescuing from them, if you actually go look at the stories of kids in state care, actual abuse is pretty rare. Actual abuse is much more commonly found in youth prisons than it is found in child services institutions. Poverty, mental problems and substance abuse by parents at home are the biggest problems (yes, each bigger than the stereotypical criminal reasons. And even the relatively small group of criminal kids outnumber actually physically abused kids 10-to-1. Kids abandoned by their parents, also a tiny group, far outnumber actually abused kids) It seems to me the whole "protecting kids" is just a 1000 major efforts to catch people in bad situations ... and punish them (situations often not their fault, especially poverty, or certainly not fully their fault). Then, because the kids involved are an annoying detail left behind when parents are punished like, they are ... well, first of all, deeply hidden, far from view. Needless to say, once hidden they are not taken care of very well at all. This is done so a thousand efforts, and the police and child services itself can continue focusing on the frontend and catching yet-another-new-kind-of-child-abuse to satisfy various interest groups. From the LGBTQ lobby (fortunately these days in the right direction: making sure kids are allowed to be LGBTQ, rather than as little as 10 years ago, punishing them for it) to saving money and/or trouble in schools (such as expensive adaptation of school buildings to handicaps), to helping courts enforce divorce settlements (when parents refuse to abide visitation rights for instance). But even with very serious child abuse you have to wonder: the child protection system is saturated with violence, drugs and even prostitution. That means the system is not capable of protecting children from violence, drugs or prostitution. But nobody seems to care about that. It seems clear that if the rule is introduced that the situation of the child must improve as a result of child protection or child protection must leave the child alone after 6 months or so, that it will shrink 90%+ in short order. Such a rule would have the enormous benefit that it would force child protection efforts to improve children's situations directly, rather than finding problems and throwing the kids found into an abyss. So no these efforts, from CSAM to ... are just to punish people for not abiding by mostly cultural standards. They are not about protecting kids at all. The most generous thing you can say is that they sometimes make it difficult to profit from abusing kids.

sennight 5y ago

It would be easier to take that seriously if other predictable consequences the next generation will have to deal with were given a tiny a fraction of that deference. Like a back breaking national debt, the razing of civil liberties, ever diminishing prospects of a quality of life comparable to their progenitors, etc.

adrianN 5y ago
The climate, once sufficiently changed, is much, much harder to change back than getting rid of national debt or getting civil liberties back.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Countries have quashed their debts and Governments have been overthrown with regularity throughout human history. No one has ever prevented a climate change induced event so far.
  - rutthenut 5y ago
    > No one has ever prevented a climate change induced event so far Well apparently the ban on CFCs has had a beneficial effect and the hole in the ozone layer is no longer the issue it had been
    - CraigJPerry 5y ago
      Yeah that’s a good one actually. I like it.
  - sennight 5y ago
    We stopped "global cooling" with very little difficulty in the 70s. Peak oil and overpopulation as well, all we had to do was nothing.
    - CraigJPerry 5y ago

pojzon 5y ago

Oil companies are switching away from production of petrol due to “think about children” aspect. But.. are shifting to increased production of plastic.. For now “think about children” means in 9/10 situations - “let me sell you some bullshit”. But I understand where you are comming from.

xorcist 5y ago
This has no basis in numbers unfortunately. World petroleum production is steadily increasing on a YoY basis, the only exception being the year with massive lockdowns world wide. There are no signs production will wind down in the short term. There are speculation but so far demand has been indefatigable.

littlestymaar 5y ago

> For example, climate change is a big "think of the children" issue because the impact will be felt greater by children than by the people who are currently in power. So they think. Many people currently in power will still be alive in 20 or 30 years and recent events have shown us how quickly the shit is coming at us…

bodge5000 5y ago

I don't think anyone is saying that it won't benefit children (at least not initially), the point is that the cost of doing so is high and it could easily lead to further costs which don't benefit children at all, perhaps even harms children. A good example is the argument for mass surveillance. Sure, if you know what everyone is up to at all times, you're probably going to be better at catching the baddies, but the loss in rights to everyone innocent is arguably unfair. To take it to its extremes, if you're goal is to simply put as many bad people in jail as possible, put everyone in jail.