5 ms·

13yr old groomed publicly on Twitter and kidnapped, despite chances to stop it

26 points by atestu 3y ago

m348e912 3y ago
I was going to write a long response to this, but I'll summarize it. This is not twitters problem and whether twitter has 10 or 10 million employees, their only responsibility is to respond to legal requests from law enforcement. NBC news and the parents are shifting blame to the wrong entity.
- alphaomegacode 3y ago
  It's likely that in the area of content moderation and related matters, employee numbers do matter. The parents did their job and gave the child's iPhone to authorities. Authorities followed up and gave information to Twitter then corrected the misspelling and gave that corrected information to Twitter. Here's more info on Twitter disbanding it's Trust and Safety Council which addressed child exploitation as well as other matters https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-business-a9b795e8050de12319b82b5dd7118cd7 https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-... And here's an article about layoffs gutting Twitter's Child Safety Team to the point of one person doing said work in the Asia-Pacific region https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-child-sexual-abuse-material/ https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-child-sexual-abuse-mater...
- jstarfish 3y ago
  Yeah, everything was being handled as it should until the police fucked up. Errors introduce confusion. Confusion leads to delays. It's not Twitter's fault. > Twenty-five days before the abduction, police sent a search warrant to Twitter to learn more information about the man police believe was grooming the teen. But they misspelled the username. > When the police corrected the error several weeks later, Twitter did not immediately respond, police said. > Five days later, the teen was abducted, according to prosecutors and the McConneys.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > This is not twitters problem and whether twitter has 10 or 10 million employees, their only responsibility is to respond to legal requests from law enforcement. That’s not the only responsibility of online services when they know, or reasonably should know, of things like this. Also, Twitter failed to respond timely to a legal request from law enforcement, so even on that basic level they fell short of their responsibility here.
jstarfish 3y ago
> In tweets reviewed by NBC News, the accused adult identified as a “map” — a common online abbreviation for “minor-attracted person.” I'm both amused and horrified at how open people are about this stuff. No longer do we have to divine intent from lists of ambiguous red flags, they'll just outright broadcast their proclivities without fear of consequence. I also love the "I'm mentally 13" nonsense from people old enough to know better. There was a bone-chilling moment when my (very young) kids were playing with toys together and when asked what they were doing, they responded with "role-playing." I keep seeing reports that online enticement cases sharply increased thanks to COVID. Can't say I'm surprised. Somewhere along the way, [something] got kids to normalize the very verbiage the groomers use to steer online conversations in sexual directions. They can't see it coming. I don't even try to teach mine to look for warning signs anymore and just tell them to assume everyone on the internet is Philip Garrido escaped from prison.
- tortasaur 3y ago
  > There was a bone-chilling moment when my (very young) kids were playing with toys together and when asked what they were doing, they responded with "role-playing." If this was bone-chilling, I have some bad news: there's a whole genre of "role-playing games" that have been around for decades.
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    Come on, I know what RPGs are. This isn't about role-playing games, it's about the specific term and act of role-playing-- and kids barely out of diapers describing it as such. It used to be the domain of therapists, then pedophiles. My point was that they were way too young to know what D&D even was, and is a product marketed to boys (up until 5E anyway). Mine were still playing with dolls at the time.
    - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
      I've never heard of "role playing" having this sort of connotation you're jumping to that would be troubling to see from children.
DoItToMe81 3y ago
For all the blame put on Twitter, the parents are the key point of failure here. They clearly have not taught their child any semblance of safety if he's conversing with an open and self proclaimed predator. And why you'd give your vulnerable kids totally unsupervised access is beyond me.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    “You can't even call people out for grooming anymore” Tragic. I, too, yearn for the old days when accusations could be leveled at Katy Perry for grooming.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
1123581321 3y ago
Our neighbor’s son is being groomed like this. He’s about twelve and thinks he has an older boyfriend. It’s a person on Discord who buys him gifts and talks about meeting. His parents give consequences slowly and gradually and don’t confront him because either they’re too afraid of misunderstanding, or of being cut off. Plus, they’re overworked and stressed. The odds are low that it will go as far as in the article, thankfully. But children with certain aptitudes and personalities are hard to protect. (I shouldn’t need to clarify this, but we’ve done everything we can for this kid.)

26 points by atestu 3y ago

I was going to write a long response to this, but I'll summarize it. This is not twitters problem and whether twitter has 10 or 10 million employees, their only responsibility is to respond to legal requests from law enforcement. NBC news and the parents are shifting blame to the wrong entity.

alphaomegacode 3y ago
It's likely that in the area of content moderation and related matters, employee numbers do matter. The parents did their job and gave the child's iPhone to authorities. Authorities followed up and gave information to Twitter then corrected the misspelling and gave that corrected information to Twitter. Here's more info on Twitter disbanding it's Trust and Safety Council which addressed child exploitation as well as other matters https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-business-a9b795e8050de12319b82b5dd7118cd7 https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-... And here's an article about layoffs gutting Twitter's Child Safety Team to the point of one person doing said work in the Asia-Pacific region https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-child-sexual-abuse-material/ https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-child-sexual-abuse-mater...
jstarfish 3y ago
Yeah, everything was being handled as it should until the police fucked up. Errors introduce confusion. Confusion leads to delays. It's not Twitter's fault. > Twenty-five days before the abduction, police sent a search warrant to Twitter to learn more information about the man police believe was grooming the teen. But they misspelled the username. > When the police corrected the error several weeks later, Twitter did not immediately respond, police said. > Five days later, the teen was abducted, according to prosecutors and the McConneys.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> This is not twitters problem and whether twitter has 10 or 10 million employees, their only responsibility is to respond to legal requests from law enforcement. That’s not the only responsibility of online services when they know, or reasonably should know, of things like this. Also, Twitter failed to respond timely to a legal request from law enforcement, so even on that basic level they fell short of their responsibility here.

jstarfish 3y ago

> In tweets reviewed by NBC News, the accused adult identified as a “map” — a common online abbreviation for “minor-attracted person.” I'm both amused and horrified at how open people are about this stuff. No longer do we have to divine intent from lists of ambiguous red flags, they'll just outright broadcast their proclivities without fear of consequence. I also love the "I'm mentally 13" nonsense from people old enough to know better. There was a bone-chilling moment when my (very young) kids were playing with toys together and when asked what they were doing, they responded with "role-playing." I keep seeing reports that online enticement cases sharply increased thanks to COVID. Can't say I'm surprised. Somewhere along the way, [something] got kids to normalize the very verbiage the groomers use to steer online conversations in sexual directions. They can't see it coming. I don't even try to teach mine to look for warning signs anymore and just tell them to assume everyone on the internet is Philip Garrido escaped from prison.

tortasaur 3y ago
> There was a bone-chilling moment when my (very young) kids were playing with toys together and when asked what they were doing, they responded with "role-playing." If this was bone-chilling, I have some bad news: there's a whole genre of "role-playing games" that have been around for decades.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  Come on, I know what RPGs are. This isn't about role-playing games, it's about the specific term and act of role-playing-- and kids barely out of diapers describing it as such. It used to be the domain of therapists, then pedophiles. My point was that they were way too young to know what D&D even was, and is a product marketed to boys (up until 5E anyway). Mine were still playing with dolls at the time.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    I've never heard of "role playing" having this sort of connotation you're jumping to that would be troubling to see from children.

DoItToMe81 3y ago

For all the blame put on Twitter, the parents are the key point of failure here. They clearly have not taught their child any semblance of safety if he's conversing with an open and self proclaimed predator. And why you'd give your vulnerable kids totally unsupervised access is beyond me.

jstarfish 3y ago
[flagged]
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  “You can't even call people out for grooming anymore” Tragic. I, too, yearn for the old days when accusations could be leveled at Katy Perry for grooming.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

1123581321 3y ago

Our neighbor’s son is being groomed like this. He’s about twelve and thinks he has an older boyfriend. It’s a person on Discord who buys him gifts and talks about meeting. His parents give consequences slowly and gradually and don’t confront him because either they’re too afraid of misunderstanding, or of being cut off. Plus, they’re overworked and stressed. The odds are low that it will go as far as in the article, thankfully. But children with certain aptitudes and personalities are hard to protect. (I shouldn’t need to clarify this, but we’ve done everything we can for this kid.)