18 ms·
Meta documents show 100k children sexually harassed daily on its platforms
- bell-cot 3y ago"The sexual harassment of one child is a tragedy; the sexual harassment of one hundred thousand children is a statistic." [Paraphrasing a quote usually attributed to Joseph Stalin]
- vdaea 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago> an internal 2017 email describes executive opposition to scanning Facebook Messenger for “harmful content” because it would place the service “at a competitive disadvantage vs other apps who might offer more privacy”, the lawsuit states.
- renewiltord 3y agoAmusing. Facebook trying to protect users' privacy. Newspapers killing them for supporting E2EE without CSAM scanning on the server. Boy if that isn't the collision of two hot-button issues. I wonder who will win.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- o0-0o 3y ago[flagged]
- timcavel 3y ago[dead]
- boomboomsubban 3y agoIt's bizarre to end this by denouncing encryption. "There's been this long lasting problem on Facebook, but a large part of it is something introduced last month."
- standardUser 3y ago> Child safety experts, policymakers and law enforcement have argued encryption obstructs efforts to rescue child sex-trafficking victims and the prosecution of predators. Privacy advocates praised the decision for shielding users from surveillance by governments and law enforcement. Seriously. They're practically mocking "privacy advocates" as criminals trying to evade law enforcement, whereas the other side of the argument is supported by a veritable gathering of paragons. I did not expect this kind of naked emotional appeal from The Guardian, but maybe that's my fault. And note that this is not an op-ed. Edit: I meant op-ed, not editorial.
- ethanbond 3y agoCould it possibly be that encryption does legitimately aid predators and it’s also useful for legitimate security needs? Mentioning the former doesn’t make it an appeal to emotion. The emotional reaction you (and others) have to it is because it’s a legitimately emotional subject. Doesn’t make it less real.
- standardUser 3y ago> Could it possibly be that encryption does legitimately aid predators and it’s also useful for legitimate security needs? I never stated otherwise. > Mentioning the former doesn’t make it an appeal to emotion. No, mentioning that concept does not constitute an appeal to emotion. I described the specific language in the article that was an emotional appeal.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoYou're ignoring the lengthy article before the part they quoted. They spent several paragraphs describing how there's a real problem that's hurting children. They then used the emotion that built up to attack something tangentially connected to that problem. That's what makes it an appeal to emotion.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- meepmorp 3y agoI'm perhaps alone in this, but that's fewer than I would have expected.
- spencerchubb 3y agoMe too, I expected more. Given 2 billion daily active users, then 0.005% of the users are children who are being sexually harassed.
- clipsy 3y agoPer day.
- zdyn5 3y agoYes per day, it’s still a minute percentage
- clipsy 3y agoIf a child is on facebook for 5 years (the max possible without violating age requirements and assuming the age of majority is 18) and if harassment events are independently distributed, the chance of this particular child suffering sexual harassment is (at least) 1 - (1 - 0.00005)^(365 * 5) = ~8.7%. Moreover, given that the 13-17 (inclusive) age range represents a small portion of FB's total user base, the 0.005% figure is a deep underestimate itself, meaning the 8.7% is as well. Everyone is free to their opinion, of course, but "only 8.7% of children on FB are sexually harassed" seems a bit cavalier.
- FeepingCreature 3y agoOf course, there's no reason to assume it's independently distributed.
- spencerchubb 3y agoIt's better than the rate of child sexual harrassment in real life. So facebook beats real life on this metric.
- jimbob45 3y agoA unique 100k each day or is there overlap? Also are these genuine messages or just wide-cast spam messages? Technically we all get sexually harassed daily if we include our GMail spam folders.
- rijx 3y agoHow can anyone believe law enforcement would catch more criminals by having more data if they’re understaffed already?
- hackerlight 3y agoBecause whoever works there can use that data to more effectively and efficiently carry out their work. How is this even a serious question? Not everything is about headcount.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoIt's all about headcount, actually. Society should maximize the number of people necessary for authorities to do anything at all. If they want to investigate someone, they should have to send men out there to physically compromise the computers instead of having a button they can push to reveal that person's entire life history on a monitor. That puts hard limits on the scale of their operations, ensures their powers are checked and limits the damage done by any eventual abuse. Society is going in the opposite direction instead: it's minimizing the number of people required and maximizing the scale of operations. Naturally, societies all over the globe are trending towards totalitarian surveillance police states where power and authority are concentrated in the hands of few. The panopticon was envisioned as a way to allow a single guard to keep watch over limitless prisoners. People are always ready to accept that because they think they would never be imprisoned themselves.
- hackerlight 3y agoSo this is a change in topic, from "will surveillance help them catch more criminals", to "is surveillance a bad thing". Basically, your view is that surveillance is bad because it can be abused by an authoritarian and eventually lead to the erosion of liberal democracy and individual freedoms. Which has validity. What about terrorism, though? If we completely eliminated the surveillance apparatus, how many more terrorist attacks would there be, and what would the consequences of that be on the survival of liberal democracy? I ask these questions in earnest. Maybe the answer is "not many terrorist attacks would have been prevented". But then I read these news articles of multiple terrorist plotters being arrested before committing the act. What percentage of those arrests are attributable to the surveillance apparatus? And if that apparatus was removed, and these people successfully committed those acts (say, they blew up a bunch of people on NYE), what impact would this have on people's voting patterns? Well, people would be more inclined to vote for a strongman authoritarian to fix the terrorism issue, which then creates the very problem that you are concerned about with the surveillance state in the first place. Which is the erosion of liberalism and democracy and freedoms. The AfD will get elected. Forget any progress on climate change. Then we get climate refugees, leading to further destabilization. Etc. What I'm getting at is there is no solution that doesn't involve trade-offs when it comes to protecting freedoms and democracy. Maybe the answer in the modern world isn't that surveillance is always bad, it's that surveillance needs to be heavily constrained with newly designed checks and balances.
- karaterobot 3y agoWhat's the base rate to compare this against? For other social networks, for other websites, for society as a whole. My general attitude about meta is that it's cool to point out any flaw that might get people mad at them, but I just want to know if there is any reason to think this is a special problem they have. And, even though it's a double standard, I do get my hackles up when they start testing the waters to see how effective it is to imply that end-to-end encryption causes child abuse.
- robcohen 3y agoYou see the same problem with universities, the military, the peace corps, etc. People have an agenda to push and they want to construct a simple narrative that supports that agenda. Simple as. Thanks for taking the time to point out that the narrative may be flawed, we need more people to do that.
- Animats 3y agoWhat's the definition of "sexually harassed"? Does it include being spammed with some form of sexual content? That would inflate the numbers.
- jncfhnb 3y agoThat would inflate the numbers… correctly
- maximus-decimus 3y agoIf that's the case, then facebook sexually harasses me by showing me ads for Hooters and a Coffee where baristas only wear bikinis in Florida. I DON'T EVEN LIVE IN THE STATES, STOP SHOWING ME THOSE SOFTPORN ADS! Anyway, does that mean I can sue Zuckerberg for sexual harassment?
- Goronmon 3y agoExactly, it's important in these situations to put aside the concerns about children and instead we need to have a lengthy, detailed discussion on the exact nature of the use of the phrase "sexual harassment". Once we have accomplished that, we can truly acknowledge that we've made the world a better place.
- belorn 3y agoWhich platforms do meta allow children to create accounts? To my understanding, they stopped allowing children on their platforms since social networks can cause major harm to children from things like bullying, and that children can't give consent to the model of data collections that meta do.
- clipsy 3y agoThey have "Messenger Kids" targeted at the under-13 market with safeguards ostensibly in place, and as far as I know children 13 and over can create FB/IG accounts.
- doublepg23 3y agoYou can add barriers and policies but I've been astonished what parents will work around to get their children to use these platforms (I recall a family member using their ID to allow their 11yr old child on Discord).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cj 3y ago> they stopped allowing children on their platforms AFAIK, anyone can sign up for an account by simply changing their birth year during the sign up flow.
- decremental 3y ago[dead]
- throwitaway222 3y agoPerhaps this might be the first great use-case of AI - stopping people from doing inappropriate harassment..
- ivanjermakov 3y agoYou mean appropriate harassment exists?
- andersa 3y agoIt does, many Americans like to defend it as "free speech".
- throwitaway222 3y agoI think I had two sentences in my mind.
- pjstinz 3y ago[dead]
- adrr 3y agoWhy are children even allowed on social media? From a society standpoint, social network use is correlated to mental health problems(1). Then factor in sexual harassment and bullying. (1) https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html#:~:text=Children%20and%20adolescents%20who%20spend,symptoms%20of%20depression%20and%20anxiety.&text=This%20is%20concerning%20as%20a,a%20day%20on%20social%20media https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-h....
- matheusmoreira 3y agoWhy are children allowed on the computer at all? Why are they allowed outside the house? Why are they allowed to leave their rooms? Why are they allowed to have friends? Why are they allowed to talk to anyone? Why are they allowed to do literally anything at all? Why are they allowed to exist?
- uptownfunk 3y agoShh no one wants to entertain this.. It should be banned for all kids until 16 years of age. Frankly it should be outlawed period. Only books, music, art and board games.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bertil 3y agoThey are allowed have friends and to communicate with them?
- lolinder 3y agoThere are plenty of other ways to communicate with friends. My generation used text messaging, the generation before used phone calls. Both are perfectly acceptable methods of communicating that don't expose children to the many problems that social media creates.
- AlbertCory 3y agoProps for saying it. The kids would hate it, but then, they hate laws against selling tobacco & alcohol to minors and letting them into X-rated movies too. Too bad. It's for your own good, Junior. "They'd just find ways around it" ?? Then we'll block those, too. We don't need to be 100% effective.
- Dylan16807 3y agoSo what percentage of the sexual harassment involves adults, and what percentage is grooming? Tossing everything into a single number isn't very helpful.
- bimguy 3y agoIt is mind boggling how a high level Apple employee would not use Apple's own parental control abilities to safe guard their child's online activity. They aren't even supposed to be using the IG platform at twelve years old. I hope Meta would throw that back in Apple's face if they kicked up a stink. Obviously this kind of harassment should not exist in the first place but parents who work in tech should be held more accountable for not protecting their kids imo.
- null0pointer 3y agoNow do Discord.
- wredue 3y agoSeriously though. People always comment about how Call of duty voice chat was braving the depths of degeneracy, but those people have obviously never done random pick up groups in gaming discords.
- GaryNumanVevo 3y agoAs a parent, Discord is the number 1 threat to my children. I gave them the whole "stranger danger" talk, and I regularly check in to see if anyone is harassing them. My kids are honest and my 14 year old has gotten multiple people asking for inappropriate photos in one of the Fortnite server (not sure if it's an official one?). I don't want to ostracize them, since they use it for playing games with their friends in private servers. Actually another parent I know specifically admins his own kids server and only lets them communicate with their friends via that server.
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoHey nobody wants even a single child being harassed. There is lots of harassment in real life too and it can happen on any street corner. But most people would agree that recording everything on every street corner 24/7 is not acceptable in a free society. As more and more of our lives have an online component, online services also can not prevent 100% of crime and lesser unpleasantness and still remain powerful enough to fulfill user needs and enable running of free society. There are both unique challenges and unique opportunities online. Child accounts can be more locked down. But children can lie and use parent's id/phone/etc to create adult accounts. Plus government regulation can either discourage a service from offering child accounts in the first place or make these too restrictive to be useful, forcing everyone to lie. Ultimately parents and perhaps schools have to educate children on realistic dangers they can face both online and on street corners and supervise them until they are ready to responsibly use these spaces alone.
- lolinder 3y ago> Child accounts can be more locked down. But children can lie and use parent's id/phone/etc to create adult accounts. Teenagers can also use a fake ID to buy alcohol, but we don't use that as an excuse for not having laws preventing children from buying alcohol. I'm reminded of patio11's The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero [0]. It is worthwhile to have laws that are designed to substantially reduce the amount of harm done. It is also worthwhile to be aware that there is a threshold beyond which those laws would do more harm than good. However, just because we can imagine laws beyond that threshold does not mean that our current laws are optimal. There's a delicate balance to be struck, but from the evidence that I've seen so far I'd say our laws regarding social media and children are way too far on the permissive side. [0] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
- xorbax 3y ago> we don't use that as an excuse for not having laws preventing children from buying alcohol. Listen, social media is just disrupting society like Uber disrupted taxis and Door dash disrupted food delivery. The downsides are always fine and ignorable because of the financials, and regulation is just an archaic attempt to hamper disruption We should never disrupt the forward momentum of the disruption economy, whatever the harm. Business owners will make enough money that we can soothe all harms. Later. With initiatives.
- estebarb 3y agoI don't understand why they claim that scanning messages erodes privacy: it can be done in the recipient side totally on client side. It could be as easy as a image classifier: "hey, this photo may contain unwanted content (we may be wrong), do you want to see it? Yes, No, Report, Report & Block". Unfortunately Facebook do an awful job blocking harmful content: I have reported posts where there is obvious phishing, hate speech or even murder threats and... They do nothing. But if you write "tinta negra HP" (HP black ink) they ban you immediately.
- xwolfi 3y agoIn China we feel safer, strangely. Social media is very policed, reported message are auto scored and disappear quickly even if it does reduce offensive-yet-legal discussion (but is it that bad?). Social media companies are actually terrified of being in the news because they know actual consequences will hit them. I know it s contencious to even defend this, and this message would be disappeared if HN had the same scoring system as Red (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaohongshu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaohongshu) in China, but you re right: it can be done, social media can actually be optimistic and positive. But do you want this?
- dudeinjapan 3y agoThere should be a big banner at the top of every page "Surgeon General's Warning: This app contains a gratuitous amount of dicks." From that point forward it would be caveat emptor.
- pokstad 3y agoThe real conspiracies are always in plain sight
- RecycledEle 3y agoVery true. I was teaching a 9th grade class a few years ago and realized that men from a certain demographic showing pics of their reproductive organs had traumatized the young females in my to the point most of them showed signs if PTSD. They gasped, closed their eyes, and/or recoiled at any image suddenly popping up on their computer screens or on the projector. I pointed out that this was felony child sexual abuse, and that the perpetrators were easy to find. Law enforcement did not care.