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A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

76 points by rectang 3y ago

giantg2 3y ago
Maybe if we weren't so puritanical, this would be less of an issue. So you have a picture of my junk? Ok... nobody wants it and it isn't worth anything. Should I be embarrassed that I have something 50% of other humans have? It'd be interesting to see the differences int his sort of crime in more open cultures.
- toader 3y ago
  Either you are a far outlier with confidence abounds, or you don't remember what life as a teenager is like for most.
- andy99 3y ago
  There have been some high profile cases of people standing up to similar scams, including Bezos. It (standing up to bullies - edit: extortionists is a better characterization than bully) is commendable behvaior and needs to be better publicized as such, hopefully it will make some people feel more comfortable doing the same.
  - auggierose 3y ago
    Somebody like Bezos probably just sends out hitmen after anybody trying this with him.
    - cafard 3y ago
      Not so effective when they guy trying it is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and has demonstrated that he has quite efficient hitmen of his own.
      - tcmart14 3y ago
        This has the basis to being probably a pretty good action movie.
      - auggierose 3y ago
        I guess that's a first-strike-wins scenario then. As long as he doesn't visit a Saudi embassy, I would bet on Bezos.
        lupire 3y ago
        Bezos said he married his first wife because he thought she could bust him out of a Venezuelan prison if needed. Then he divorced her and married a newsreader. So I wouldn't bet on him.
  - busterarm 3y ago
    Standing up to bullies is the kind of thing that gets young people expelled from school. Something about those zero tolerance policies. We're teaching our kids to be helpless. The only option we give them is to appeal to authority and it absolutely fucks them over when they're involved in a situation because of their own choices.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      I agree. "Standing up to bullies is the kind of thing that gets young people expelled from school. Something about those zero tolerance policies." So it's not really the standing up part but the policy that gets them expelled.
      - busterarm 3y ago
        Rigid, uncaring administrative bodies can often end up being bullies too.
        giantg2 3y ago
        I think it's mostly that they don't want to get sued for making a bad judgement call, so they default to ham-fisted policies where no judgment is applied. But of course the schools get sued all the time anyways, usually due to stupid policies.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - theGnuMe 3y ago
      >Standing up to bullies is the kind of thing that gets young people expelled from school. I think this is false. You can stand up to a bully without physical fighting or retaliation.
- sourcecodeplz 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ngai_aku 3y ago
    You think only kids in the West are susceptible to shame?
  - zeroCalories 3y ago
    [flagged]
- MeImCounting 3y ago
  It really does come down to our society having a sick relationship with sex, our bodies and interpersonal relationships in general. I think we are really going to go through some growing pains in the near future when it comes to our 18th century morality in this 21st century world. Hopefully we can move past restrictive religious ways of looking at the world and actually prevent things like what happened in the article.
  - sojsurf 3y ago
    The foundation for healthy interpersonal relationships seems deeply tied into the core values of (some) "restrictive religious ways". "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." I would posit that the closer people walk to those ideals, the healthier their society will be. That said, Christians, in general, would agree with you that law by its very nature has no power to bring about good in people. That's pretty much one of the core tenets. In the end, laws serve only like the double yellow line in the middle of American highways. It's a guide that helps us share the road without hurting others. The guard rails of commitment, love and genuine care for others brings about an environment where relationships can flourish. They provide stability and care that children need to thrive emotionally. They keep us from swerving into relational "oncoming traffic" when we get frustrated or angry, instead encouraging us to stay in the lane and figure out how to work together.
- user568439 3y ago
  Maybe or maybe not. Don’t blame the victims please. I’m not from a puritan environment at all but when I was a teenager I had low self esteem. I believe I could have been an easy victim back then.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    It isn't blaming the victim to have a candid conversation around how society and individuals can or could be more resilient. This is how progress happens. For example, we often educate children to set boundaries and tell adults about unwanted sexual advances. That doesn't mean that children who failed to set boundaries and tell adults deserve to be molested. .
  - giantg2 3y ago
    I'm not blaming the victim, rather the societal views that enabled this (in part). I too had some body insecurity at that age, but more societal openness would have likely reduced that.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  There are other forms of extortion or they could make something up. Are you saying that extortion would be impossible in a non-puritanical society?
  - bondarchuk 3y ago
    That is clearly not what they are saying.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I have wondered if generative AI will make this less of an issue. Victims won't be as afraid of images leaking out if they can plausibly claim that they're fakes.
  - throwaway421967 3y ago
    Yeah, if fakes are already out there. What value does the real thing have?
    - lupire 3y ago
      If the solution is a stop caring about anything, the cure is worse than the disease.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Yep, this is already happening, although the victims seem to still be pissed.
- watt 3y ago
  It does not necessarily need to be picture of anyone's junk. It does not need even to be a picture. So let's focus on the real issue here. Puritanism or whatever, extortion needs to be impossible.
  - mxkopy 3y ago
    A war on crime can always be used as a scapegoat for other things, but promoting a culture of resilience through acceptance is a weird thing to hijack IMO.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - MeImCounting 3y ago
    How does someone make extortion impossible? What does that look like?
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      We could all agree that you get forgiven for anything publicized by a blackmailer.
      - MeImCounting 3y ago
        So kind of like getting rid of puritanical moral standards across society? There are some things people deserve to feel shame for (basically anything you intentionally do that hurts other people). Having junk between your legs is not one of those things. Ditto for 99% of the other things people get blackmailed for.
        ben_w 3y ago
        That's a start, but I think it may take more than that. Many discussions here about freedom of speech and the value of anonymity to this; the freedom to express ideas without worrying it may explode in our faces later. I think right-leaning people use "cancel culture" to describe the same category of concerns. At lest, I hope that's what they mean by the term. Business and governments say similar things, saying that if every meeting is recorded, people will be less willing to speak up. A society where we don't care about people having had dumb opinions in the past would help more… but that creates a game theoretic risk, we need some kind of reputation system to avoid the iterated prisoners' dilemma degenerating into the ordinary prisoners' dilemma. I don't have any complete answers. But at the same time, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, we can certainly make things better.
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  That is one solution that is impossible to implement. We must recognize that any system that involves people must involve involve people.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  These cases may also be effective in situations where the victim has a significant other so the release of private transcripts is not nearly "a picture of their junk". I think if you want to reduce the shame of people in situations, the absolute best thing to do is to make extortion a crime that law enforcement has the ability to prosecute forcefully. If that's the case, people who are in this situation know that the law and the resources of the law are on their side. I think this law -> culture change has already been shown to work in similar situations. For instance, when women know that law enforcement will help them investigate sexual harassment/assault it makes it means they have less shame about dressing/socializing how they want.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Extortion is already illegal and will be prosecuted, similar to sexual harassment. What else would you change?
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  Now I'm wondering if 1-800-GOT-JUNK has a secret list of services.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  They'd just try a different scam. There is always going to be ways to hurt or threaten to hurt people.
- gspencley 3y ago
  I don't want to make light of the situation, a teenager committing suicide is a horrible, avoidable tragedy. Your comment reminds me of the first time I received the phishing scam where the email claims that your computer was hacked and that the hacker has a video of you pleasuring yourself that they will allegedly send to all of your contacts if you don't pay them money. After immediately recognizing that it was a phish, my second thought was "I value that money way more than I value my dignity ... so even if this were legit ... sorry grandma!"
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
I think the bad guy extortionist should be held accountable but if Instagram cannot identify them then Instagram should be held accountable. These platforms need more traceability. If Instagram were liable for anon bad actors illegal behavior then Instagram would clean up their act with a quickness. There is no incentive to fix anything on these platforms with the current rules.
- BowBun 3y ago
  I tend to agree. If you're going to allow people to anonymize their identities with your tools, and further use your tools to facilitate mass crime that results in damages or loss of life, you need to be accountable for that! I think the only way out of this is a full ID verification system online, which worries me a lot for a bunch of reasons. Not sure how you de-anonymize for safety without invading privacy (the eternal tradeoff).
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    You could set up a system that supports both. If you want to be verified then you opt-in and then you get a special green check by your name. And also provide a bunch of tools to allow you to filter based on the green check -- e.g., I don't allow DMs from non-green checks or don't show me any content in my feed that isn't from a green check account. So you have the option to decide how much you want to be in the anonymous versus verified world.
    - fnordlord 3y ago
      I'd go even further and make DM'ing a privilege for only verified accounts. You could anonymously read and broadcast but anything private should require personal responsibility. I don't see how this would effect ad-revenue or anything either. I imagine it would only bother bullies, trolls and scammers.
- cybrox 3y ago
  I see where this is coming from but making platforms fully liable for user content will make it impossible to start a business that includes (semi-) public user interaction at all. Only FAANG-size companies will be able to afford the legal fees attached to that idea.
annexrichmond 3y ago
> After his death, the scammers sent Guffey a laughing face emoji and a message using a pseudo account on Instagram after the original one was shut down. “It said, ‘did I tell you your son begged for his life?’” Guffey says. They also demanded money in exchange for the photos. I wish there was a special prison for these types of people. Jesus Christ.
- mjhay 3y ago
  Con artists seem to often have a psychopathy that even a lot of violent criminals don't possess.
  - Widdershin 3y ago
    Gonna get even worse once this sort of work is outsourced to language models en masse
  - Log_out_ 3y ago
    I had a "son" WhatsApp scammer I took for a chat gpt ride. The "father" wouldn't send money cause the son was an addict. Sleezy scumbag happily pressed along promising rehab, sun and moon.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  I would go to Taken levels of "yeah, I'm coming after you" if this happened to me. Yet again, Humans are the problem.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >using a pseudo account points to one of the major issues around this. Why are these even possible? Instagram is a social network for real people. Implement a strong form of ID verification. Charge people a dollar for a sign up. Sure there'll still be edge cases of people using stolen creds but it cuts down what, 99.9% of scam? The kid in the article was extorted for 25$. Drive the cost of this crap up.
blueyes 3y ago
It's would be trivially easy to scan these streams of messages through some kind of ML classifier and identify cases of extortion before they result in suicide. Once the platforms identify the perps, they can block them from the platform. I hope this lawsuit makes the costs of platform inaction so high that they build out detection systems.
- ctoth 3y ago
  I can't believe you are actively suggesting this. Even in this horrific case. Okay, so you train your classifier on extortion. Then you train it to detect sexual content. Then you train it to detect potential piracy. Then you train it to detect wrongthink. Then you don't have a free society anymore.
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    We don't have a free society when predators can easily prey on victims like this with no repercussions. That's not freedom for the victims, that's just another form of prison. I personally don't know what the answer is, but it isn't "do nothing to protect freedom".
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    Don't we already do this with email spam? And movie/TV ratings? You could slippery slope any classifier for any purpose into this -- this is why hopefully we have brains to determine good and less good uses of technology.
  - nullstyle 3y ago
    Social media is not required to have a free society. I don't think the progression you predict is how things would play out. IMO, At some point, people will simply talk in person (well, off-network) to be sociable. Casual piracy, e.g. link sharing in DMs, would be a tipping point if I had to guess.
  - gnfargbl 3y ago
    Or: you stop after you train your classifier on extortion, because society is capable of having and maintaining standards and because not every slope has to be slippery? There are many other cases in which we allow limited intrusions into individual freedom in order to protect society. For instance, here in the UK, a police officer can enter my house without a warrant if they believe that it is necessary to facilitate an arrest for an indictable offence -- and that has been the case since at least 1984. If your way of thinking was accurate, police should now be routinely entering my house and beating confessions out of me.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
oh_sigh 3y ago
I'm curious what efforts have gone into finding these scammers? Any? I might be wrong but I can't imagine them having great OPSEC, especially if they are accepting payment through venmo...probably a hacked account, but they would try to get the cash out of the hacked account in some manner which would help target them.
bandyaboot 3y ago
A lot of this is about parent/child relationships and making sure our kids won’t feel such a degree of shame about something like this happening that they’d resort to taking their own life, but also unless these companies have some skin in the game, they have no motivation to help combat these types of things from happening.
- Syonyk 3y ago
  Likely internal opinion based on observed external actions: > Of course not. They're on the platform using it, viewing ads, aren't they? > I mean, it's a shame that some people die, because they won't be able to view ads, and the negative press might impact other people's opinion of the platform leading to potentially reduced ad view, but, heeeeeyyyyyy it's easy enough to prevent certain platform-hostile opinions from being surfaced too much on the platform, you know? "Vagueries of the Algorithm" and all! (insert a large rolleyes here) I'm sure we'll get the Standard Tech Appopollylolly: "We are so, so sorry that you caught us enabling this bad behavior, and we will try to do the work to ensure you don't catch us doing it next time." > The lawsuit, filed in South Carolina state court last week, accuses Meta’s social media platforms of causing a range of problems in children, including depression, low self-esteem, anxiety and eating disorders. It alleges that Meta uses algorithms to aggressively target adolescents and does not do enough to keep them safe from harm. Of course it doesn't. Depressed, low self esteem, and anxious? That's their dream user - likely to be online a lot, and easily influenced by Meta's actual customers, those paying to influence the thinking of others. The more people like that Meta can produce out of formerly well adjusted individuals, the more money they make. Their incentives are entirely opposite that of larger society. Healthy, well adjusted, offline individuals are mostly worthless to Meta, because they're likely to be on the platform far less often. You just need enough that the platform looks like it's well adjusted people on it. I hope the lawsuit succeeds. It's long past time for the social media companies to face the consequences of what they've created for their own short sighted profit numbers.
  - theossuary 3y ago
    It's so strange to me that HN has this view of social media, but not other things, like fast food. Fast food uses deceptive advertising and purposefully tries to get kids addicted to their product; which slowly kills them over time. But I remember HN being against sugar taxes, and other laws to help prevent it. But for some reason social media is different? I don't see why it would be. Are the people on HN pushing for social media bans also pushing for unionization, banning pharmaceutical commercials, and preventing fast food stores in highschools? Because if they aren't it seems really hypocritical.
ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
I hope this will encourage the lawmaker to ask more of law enforcement. It's their job to track this down. I'm sure Instagram would comply with whatever warrants were issued to them, even ones I'd personally prefer they not. It's unfortunate that it took this happening to a congresscritter, in their privilege of perfect law enforcement preference, otherwise blind to how LEOs aren't doing their job, to do something. Unfortunately, they're not asking LEOs to do their job, but rather suing the communication medium, even though the same scam could be run through a different communication medium.
- gnfargbl 3y ago
  [flagged]
- arp242 3y ago
  So they track this down to some guy in Russia. Then what? Tracking down these types of criminals is probably the least effective things law enforcement could be doing because it's quite time-consuming and a lot of the time it gives you no concrete result.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    I am not confident that 100% of these instances are "some guy in russia". Is it true that these scammers in question were? Or that LEO tracked them down at all? Or did anything meaningful? I agree that we ask LEOs to enforce the law, and doing so is a lot of work. There is, though, quite a large discrepancy between what we ask them to do, and what they do, so it remains to be seen if they are doing a lot of work, and it remains to be seen if they work they do do, is the work we want them to do, versus the work they want to do (for example, what sort of speed limit enforcement operations do they run? How much do they prosecute simple drug possession?) I believe opening themselves up freely and willingly to non-LEO oversight and control would do a lot to answer those questions.
    - arp242 3y ago
      It's not 100%, no, that's why I used "a lot" and not "all". And even if they are in the US, it's not that hard to be reasonable untrackable with minimal skills. People make mistakes, and maybe every now and then you might catch one person. Whoop-die-doo. It's just not effective or reasonable to track down every single case in depth.
GlibMonkeyDeath 3y ago
Another Black Mirror episode that has come to life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shut_Up_and_Dance_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shut_Up_and_Dance_(Black_Mirro...
- jondwillis 3y ago
  S3 is truly the chefs kiss vintage Black Mirror season for me. I mean, San Junipero comes directly after it. Even in the quaint year of 2016 though, we unfortunately already had some close examples: Amanda Todd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd Tyler Clementi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi
thex10 3y ago
I recently watched a documentary[0] about the social media dangers for children. It mostly centers around narratives & interviews from a variety of people young and old, and in my opinion decently avoids trite pearl-clutching over vague assumptions about 'technology' or any particular company. Among other things, I am a bit floored by how much child suicide has increased over the past decades. [0] "Childhood 2.0" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He3IJJhFy-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He3IJJhFy-I
jimt1234 3y ago
This story is absolutely horrible. I feel so bad for that kid's parents. I had no idea this kinda thing was happening to dudes; I thought it was all teen girls being tricked into sending nudes, and then being extorted. I don't know what the solution is here. However, every time I think on it, I keep coming back to parent and personal responsibility, which sounds like victim blaming. I kinda hate myself for that, but for every technical solution I can think of, I instantly think of a simple way to circumvent it. So then I wonder how to make the message stick: DON'T SEND NUDES TO ANYONE ON THE INTERNET. EVER!
- api 3y ago
  There are organized "boiler room" operations doing this to kids at scale. They'll trick a kid into sending nudes or even lie and claim to have them or use AI to generate them, then will try to get the kid to steal their parents' credit cards and send money. Today's dark forest hellscape Internet is not a safe place for young people, and it's getting worse with AI automation of scams and fraud. I wouldn't even post pics of kids online anywhere public since these can be mined to create fake AI blackmail material. Edit: it's fraud all the way down, too. A lot of these boiler rooms use borderline or actual slave labor. The person doing the scam may not be getting anything for it at all, or might even be captive. So it's fraud perpetuated by fraud victims. At the top is usually organized crime.
  - jondwillis 3y ago
    Do you have any links detailing these kinds of boiler rooms?
    - barcode_feeder 3y ago
      https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/myanmar-cyber-scam.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/my... This has a different victim demographic but is broadly similar and was a good read (at least as far as I remember)
- arp242 3y ago
trhway 3y ago
[flagged]
mise_en_place 3y ago
It seems that Instagram in particular has a major problem with scamming. It would be safer to have teens consume all of these services as read-only, using an alternative front-end.
- chankstein38 3y ago
  I've been saying this for a long time. Kids under a certain age should have read-only access to the internet in general. They don't need access to make posts, youtube comments, or on Instagram. I really think this is the solution. If they want to socialize, go outside. The internet is not a toy it's a different dimension of life. The problem with here is it's still a pretty wild west and we don't have enough guards to prevent crime. You wouldn't let your kid walk around Philly's Kensington Ave without you and you sure as hell wouldn't let them walk around talking to everyone there... so why do we let them on platforms that are filled with the same or worse? Sure IG can be harmless but it's also a quick search away from whatever content they can (or can't) imagine.
glorygut123 3y ago
Surely the real problem here, to my non-American eyes, is having easy access to a firearm, no?
- telotortium 3y ago
  Pretty easy to hang yourself too.
- curtis3389 3y ago
  It is certainly part of the problem, but it's not the root cause. Yes. Access to and knowledge of firearms dramatically increases the lethality of suicide attempts. But in this case, the kid was scammed for nudes and then blackmailed with them. Without easy access to guns, he could have survived the suicide attempt, but there's no guarantee. The root cause has more to do with childhood, internet access, and maybe even parent-child relationships.
- tmdyn 3y ago
  To this American's eyes, not mentioning that at all is a glaring omission. I recognize they might not want to in the story of the representative's son (as it might come across as blaming the parents in a recent tragedy) but even though it's for sure relevant in the aggregate.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    It's the third sentence...
- halostatue 3y ago
  This is a yes-and situation (that is, the issues are orthogonal). There are several similar stories where firearms access is not a factor (Amanda Todd is one of the most well-known, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd). Various social media networks are implicated as factors.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  I've always found this reasoning insane. People are in a position where they want, or feel it's the only option, to kill themselves. And someone suggests the problem is access to the ability to do so, rather than what lead them to feel that way? Guns, drugs, knifes, rope, exhaust, whatever. These always become the focus when a kid kills themselves. How about the circumstances that led to it? Suicide is still a problem is low gun ownership countries.
latexr 3y ago
Faster text only version: https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/30/us/rep-brandon-guffey-instagram-lawsuit-cec/ https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/30/us/rep-brandon-guffey-instag...
jmclnx 3y ago
>But Guffey says he believes that Meta and other social media companies are not being held accountable 100% true. Very sad to hear and I hope he wins. But these companies are very powerful so I doubt things will change. A blatant is what Apple did in the EU after they lost their court case.
whitakerch 3y ago
When things like this happen I always think that the more important problem is the fact that he chose suicide. This sort of thing cannot be gotten rid of entirely. It's impossible. They can always be lured into another messaging system that doesn't track or analyze data at all. I know this would be extremely embarrassing but it is far from life destroying (or at least it should be). Within a year life would've moved on and no one would even care. We all need to better come to terms with this reality and neutralize its impact and the shame of it.
- s_dev 3y ago
  He didn't choose suicide. He was mercilessly bullied and suicide was his escape hatch. The party that bullied him are culpable for his death. Choosing suicide is if you have a terminal illness and have a lethal injection administered.
BadHumans 3y ago
“If I have a party on my property, and I invite everybody on there, I’m responsible for what happens on my property,” Guffey told CNN. “And for some reason, we treat these digital companies different. These companies hide behind section 230 and say they’re not responsible.” There is a middle ground. If you are just a platform or software, then I don't think you should be liable. I don't think Discourse should be liable for every forum they host. But, when you are in the position of someone like Meta that exist to generate "engagement" to push ads onto people then I think that should change a bit.
- elevatedastalt 3y ago
  “If I have a party on my property, and I invite everybody on there, I’m responsible for what happens on my property,” I have no specific comment on the actual situation here, but I feel this expectation is also ridiculous, so the analogy doesn't work for me. People shouldn't be responsible for anything that happens on their plot of land if they have no actual hand in it.
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    > if they have no actual hand in it. But they have an actual hand in it. Discord is subletting rooms out to moderators and doesn't really have any hand in the content on any particular discord. Meta, however, is pushing their algorithm on everyone on the platform and their employees, in one way or another, handle what content is seen and what content is policed and taken down.
    - BadHumans 3y ago
      You misinterpreted their comment. They are talking about not agreeing with the actual laws around responsibility if something happens on the physical land you own.
  - lupire 3y ago
    In reality, it's complicated. You have some legal responsibility for what happens on your property.
dudul 3y ago
> Sextortion predators typically trick young victims, usually teen boys That is an interesting piece of data. Up until now, based on other media reporting, I was under the impression that things like that were disproportionally affecting girls.
DoItToMe81 3y ago
If Instagram can be held liable for not having the magic powers to preemptively police several hundred million people, would it not make more sense to put the man in jail for severe neglect for not giving his son the "Don't send yourself to strangers" talk?

76 points by rectang 3y ago

Maybe if we weren't so puritanical, this would be less of an issue. So you have a picture of my junk? Ok... nobody wants it and it isn't worth anything. Should I be embarrassed that I have something 50% of other humans have? It'd be interesting to see the differences int his sort of crime in more open cultures.

toader 3y ago
Either you are a far outlier with confidence abounds, or you don't remember what life as a teenager is like for most.
andy99 3y ago
There have been some high profile cases of people standing up to similar scams, including Bezos. It (standing up to bullies - edit: extortionists is a better characterization than bully) is commendable behvaior and needs to be better publicized as such, hopefully it will make some people feel more comfortable doing the same.
- auggierose 3y ago
  Somebody like Bezos probably just sends out hitmen after anybody trying this with him.
  - cafard 3y ago
    Not so effective when they guy trying it is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and has demonstrated that he has quite efficient hitmen of his own.
    - tcmart14 3y ago
      This has the basis to being probably a pretty good action movie.
    - auggierose 3y ago
      I guess that's a first-strike-wins scenario then. As long as he doesn't visit a Saudi embassy, I would bet on Bezos.
      - lupire 3y ago
        Bezos said he married his first wife because he thought she could bust him out of a Venezuelan prison if needed. Then he divorced her and married a newsreader. So I wouldn't bet on him.
- busterarm 3y ago
  Standing up to bullies is the kind of thing that gets young people expelled from school. Something about those zero tolerance policies. We're teaching our kids to be helpless. The only option we give them is to appeal to authority and it absolutely fucks them over when they're involved in a situation because of their own choices.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    I agree. "Standing up to bullies is the kind of thing that gets young people expelled from school. Something about those zero tolerance policies." So it's not really the standing up part but the policy that gets them expelled.
    - busterarm 3y ago
      Rigid, uncaring administrative bodies can often end up being bullies too.
      - giantg2 3y ago
        I think it's mostly that they don't want to get sued for making a bad judgement call, so they default to ham-fisted policies where no judgment is applied. But of course the schools get sued all the time anyways, usually due to stupid policies.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - theGnuMe 3y ago
    >Standing up to bullies is the kind of thing that gets young people expelled from school. I think this is false. You can stand up to a bully without physical fighting or retaliation.
sourcecodeplz 3y ago
[flagged]
- ngai_aku 3y ago
  You think only kids in the West are susceptible to shame?
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  [flagged]
MeImCounting 3y ago
It really does come down to our society having a sick relationship with sex, our bodies and interpersonal relationships in general. I think we are really going to go through some growing pains in the near future when it comes to our 18th century morality in this 21st century world. Hopefully we can move past restrictive religious ways of looking at the world and actually prevent things like what happened in the article.
- sojsurf 3y ago
  The foundation for healthy interpersonal relationships seems deeply tied into the core values of (some) "restrictive religious ways". "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." I would posit that the closer people walk to those ideals, the healthier their society will be. That said, Christians, in general, would agree with you that law by its very nature has no power to bring about good in people. That's pretty much one of the core tenets. In the end, laws serve only like the double yellow line in the middle of American highways. It's a guide that helps us share the road without hurting others. The guard rails of commitment, love and genuine care for others brings about an environment where relationships can flourish. They provide stability and care that children need to thrive emotionally. They keep us from swerving into relational "oncoming traffic" when we get frustrated or angry, instead encouraging us to stay in the lane and figure out how to work together.
user568439 3y ago
Maybe or maybe not. Don’t blame the victims please. I’m not from a puritan environment at all but when I was a teenager I had low self esteem. I believe I could have been an easy victim back then.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  It isn't blaming the victim to have a candid conversation around how society and individuals can or could be more resilient. This is how progress happens. For example, we often educate children to set boundaries and tell adults about unwanted sexual advances. That doesn't mean that children who failed to set boundaries and tell adults deserve to be molested. .
- giantg2 3y ago
  I'm not blaming the victim, rather the societal views that enabled this (in part). I too had some body insecurity at that age, but more societal openness would have likely reduced that.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
There are other forms of extortion or they could make something up. Are you saying that extortion would be impossible in a non-puritanical society?
- bondarchuk 3y ago
  That is clearly not what they are saying.
gnicholas 3y ago
I have wondered if generative AI will make this less of an issue. Victims won't be as afraid of images leaking out if they can plausibly claim that they're fakes.
- throwaway421967 3y ago
  Yeah, if fakes are already out there. What value does the real thing have?
  - lupire 3y ago
    If the solution is a stop caring about anything, the cure is worse than the disease.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Yep, this is already happening, although the victims seem to still be pissed.
watt 3y ago
It does not necessarily need to be picture of anyone's junk. It does not need even to be a picture. So let's focus on the real issue here. Puritanism or whatever, extortion needs to be impossible.
- mxkopy 3y ago
  A war on crime can always be used as a scapegoat for other things, but promoting a culture of resilience through acceptance is a weird thing to hijack IMO.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- MeImCounting 3y ago
  How does someone make extortion impossible? What does that look like?
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    We could all agree that you get forgiven for anything publicized by a blackmailer.
    - MeImCounting 3y ago
      So kind of like getting rid of puritanical moral standards across society? There are some things people deserve to feel shame for (basically anything you intentionally do that hurts other people). Having junk between your legs is not one of those things. Ditto for 99% of the other things people get blackmailed for.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        That's a start, but I think it may take more than that. Many discussions here about freedom of speech and the value of anonymity to this; the freedom to express ideas without worrying it may explode in our faces later. I think right-leaning people use "cancel culture" to describe the same category of concerns. At lest, I hope that's what they mean by the term. Business and governments say similar things, saying that if every meeting is recorded, people will be less willing to speak up. A society where we don't care about people having had dumb opinions in the past would help more… but that creates a game theoretic risk, we need some kind of reputation system to avoid the iterated prisoners' dilemma degenerating into the ordinary prisoners' dilemma. I don't have any complete answers. But at the same time, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, we can certainly make things better.
thomastjeffery 3y ago
That is one solution that is impossible to implement. We must recognize that any system that involves people must involve involve people.
fasthands9 3y ago
These cases may also be effective in situations where the victim has a significant other so the release of private transcripts is not nearly "a picture of their junk". I think if you want to reduce the shame of people in situations, the absolute best thing to do is to make extortion a crime that law enforcement has the ability to prosecute forcefully. If that's the case, people who are in this situation know that the law and the resources of the law are on their side. I think this law -> culture change has already been shown to work in similar situations. For instance, when women know that law enforcement will help them investigate sexual harassment/assault it makes it means they have less shame about dressing/socializing how they want.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Extortion is already illegal and will be prosecuted, similar to sexual harassment. What else would you change?
devoutsalsa 3y ago
Now I'm wondering if 1-800-GOT-JUNK has a secret list of services.
nitwit005 3y ago
They'd just try a different scam. There is always going to be ways to hurt or threaten to hurt people.
gspencley 3y ago
I don't want to make light of the situation, a teenager committing suicide is a horrible, avoidable tragedy. Your comment reminds me of the first time I received the phishing scam where the email claims that your computer was hacked and that the hacker has a video of you pleasuring yourself that they will allegedly send to all of your contacts if you don't pay them money. After immediately recognizing that it was a phish, my second thought was "I value that money way more than I value my dignity ... so even if this were legit ... sorry grandma!"

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

I think the bad guy extortionist should be held accountable but if Instagram cannot identify them then Instagram should be held accountable. These platforms need more traceability. If Instagram were liable for anon bad actors illegal behavior then Instagram would clean up their act with a quickness. There is no incentive to fix anything on these platforms with the current rules.

BowBun 3y ago
I tend to agree. If you're going to allow people to anonymize their identities with your tools, and further use your tools to facilitate mass crime that results in damages or loss of life, you need to be accountable for that! I think the only way out of this is a full ID verification system online, which worries me a lot for a bunch of reasons. Not sure how you de-anonymize for safety without invading privacy (the eternal tradeoff).
- kenjackson 3y ago
  You could set up a system that supports both. If you want to be verified then you opt-in and then you get a special green check by your name. And also provide a bunch of tools to allow you to filter based on the green check -- e.g., I don't allow DMs from non-green checks or don't show me any content in my feed that isn't from a green check account. So you have the option to decide how much you want to be in the anonymous versus verified world.
  - fnordlord 3y ago
    I'd go even further and make DM'ing a privilege for only verified accounts. You could anonymously read and broadcast but anything private should require personal responsibility. I don't see how this would effect ad-revenue or anything either. I imagine it would only bother bullies, trolls and scammers.
cybrox 3y ago
I see where this is coming from but making platforms fully liable for user content will make it impossible to start a business that includes (semi-) public user interaction at all. Only FAANG-size companies will be able to afford the legal fees attached to that idea.

annexrichmond 3y ago

> After his death, the scammers sent Guffey a laughing face emoji and a message using a pseudo account on Instagram after the original one was shut down. “It said, ‘did I tell you your son begged for his life?’” Guffey says. They also demanded money in exchange for the photos. I wish there was a special prison for these types of people. Jesus Christ.

mjhay 3y ago
Con artists seem to often have a psychopathy that even a lot of violent criminals don't possess.
- Widdershin 3y ago
  Gonna get even worse once this sort of work is outsourced to language models en masse
- Log_out_ 3y ago
  I had a "son" WhatsApp scammer I took for a chat gpt ride. The "father" wouldn't send money cause the son was an addict. Sleezy scumbag happily pressed along promising rehab, sun and moon.
sonicanatidae 3y ago
I would go to Taken levels of "yeah, I'm coming after you" if this happened to me. Yet again, Humans are the problem.
Barrin92 3y ago
>using a pseudo account points to one of the major issues around this. Why are these even possible? Instagram is a social network for real people. Implement a strong form of ID verification. Charge people a dollar for a sign up. Sure there'll still be edge cases of people using stolen creds but it cuts down what, 99.9% of scam? The kid in the article was extorted for 25$. Drive the cost of this crap up.

blueyes 3y ago

It's would be trivially easy to scan these streams of messages through some kind of ML classifier and identify cases of extortion before they result in suicide. Once the platforms identify the perps, they can block them from the platform. I hope this lawsuit makes the costs of platform inaction so high that they build out detection systems.

ctoth 3y ago
I can't believe you are actively suggesting this. Even in this horrific case. Okay, so you train your classifier on extortion. Then you train it to detect sexual content. Then you train it to detect potential piracy. Then you train it to detect wrongthink. Then you don't have a free society anymore.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  We don't have a free society when predators can easily prey on victims like this with no repercussions. That's not freedom for the victims, that's just another form of prison. I personally don't know what the answer is, but it isn't "do nothing to protect freedom".
- kenjackson 3y ago
  Don't we already do this with email spam? And movie/TV ratings? You could slippery slope any classifier for any purpose into this -- this is why hopefully we have brains to determine good and less good uses of technology.
- nullstyle 3y ago
  Social media is not required to have a free society. I don't think the progression you predict is how things would play out. IMO, At some point, people will simply talk in person (well, off-network) to be sociable. Casual piracy, e.g. link sharing in DMs, would be a tipping point if I had to guess.
- gnfargbl 3y ago
  Or: you stop after you train your classifier on extortion, because society is capable of having and maintaining standards and because not every slope has to be slippery? There are many other cases in which we allow limited intrusions into individual freedom in order to protect society. For instance, here in the UK, a police officer can enter my house without a warrant if they believe that it is necessary to facilitate an arrest for an indictable offence -- and that has been the case since at least 1984. If your way of thinking was accurate, police should now be routinely entering my house and beating confessions out of me.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

oh_sigh 3y ago

I'm curious what efforts have gone into finding these scammers? Any? I might be wrong but I can't imagine them having great OPSEC, especially if they are accepting payment through venmo...probably a hacked account, but they would try to get the cash out of the hacked account in some manner which would help target them.

bandyaboot 3y ago

A lot of this is about parent/child relationships and making sure our kids won’t feel such a degree of shame about something like this happening that they’d resort to taking their own life, but also unless these companies have some skin in the game, they have no motivation to help combat these types of things from happening.

Syonyk 3y ago
Likely internal opinion based on observed external actions: > Of course not. They're on the platform using it, viewing ads, aren't they? > I mean, it's a shame that some people die, because they won't be able to view ads, and the negative press might impact other people's opinion of the platform leading to potentially reduced ad view, but, heeeeeyyyyyy it's easy enough to prevent certain platform-hostile opinions from being surfaced too much on the platform, you know? "Vagueries of the Algorithm" and all! (insert a large rolleyes here) I'm sure we'll get the Standard Tech Appopollylolly: "We are so, so sorry that you caught us enabling this bad behavior, and we will try to do the work to ensure you don't catch us doing it next time." > The lawsuit, filed in South Carolina state court last week, accuses Meta’s social media platforms of causing a range of problems in children, including depression, low self-esteem, anxiety and eating disorders. It alleges that Meta uses algorithms to aggressively target adolescents and does not do enough to keep them safe from harm. Of course it doesn't. Depressed, low self esteem, and anxious? That's their dream user - likely to be online a lot, and easily influenced by Meta's actual customers, those paying to influence the thinking of others. The more people like that Meta can produce out of formerly well adjusted individuals, the more money they make. Their incentives are entirely opposite that of larger society. Healthy, well adjusted, offline individuals are mostly worthless to Meta, because they're likely to be on the platform far less often. You just need enough that the platform looks like it's well adjusted people on it. I hope the lawsuit succeeds. It's long past time for the social media companies to face the consequences of what they've created for their own short sighted profit numbers.
- theossuary 3y ago
  It's so strange to me that HN has this view of social media, but not other things, like fast food. Fast food uses deceptive advertising and purposefully tries to get kids addicted to their product; which slowly kills them over time. But I remember HN being against sugar taxes, and other laws to help prevent it. But for some reason social media is different? I don't see why it would be. Are the people on HN pushing for social media bans also pushing for unionization, banning pharmaceutical commercials, and preventing fast food stores in highschools? Because if they aren't it seems really hypocritical.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago

I hope this will encourage the lawmaker to ask more of law enforcement. It's their job to track this down. I'm sure Instagram would comply with whatever warrants were issued to them, even ones I'd personally prefer they not. It's unfortunate that it took this happening to a congresscritter, in their privilege of perfect law enforcement preference, otherwise blind to how LEOs aren't doing their job, to do something. Unfortunately, they're not asking LEOs to do their job, but rather suing the communication medium, even though the same scam could be run through a different communication medium.

gnfargbl 3y ago
[flagged]
arp242 3y ago
So they track this down to some guy in Russia. Then what? Tracking down these types of criminals is probably the least effective things law enforcement could be doing because it's quite time-consuming and a lot of the time it gives you no concrete result.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  I am not confident that 100% of these instances are "some guy in russia". Is it true that these scammers in question were? Or that LEO tracked them down at all? Or did anything meaningful? I agree that we ask LEOs to enforce the law, and doing so is a lot of work. There is, though, quite a large discrepancy between what we ask them to do, and what they do, so it remains to be seen if they are doing a lot of work, and it remains to be seen if they work they do do, is the work we want them to do, versus the work they want to do (for example, what sort of speed limit enforcement operations do they run? How much do they prosecute simple drug possession?) I believe opening themselves up freely and willingly to non-LEO oversight and control would do a lot to answer those questions.
  - arp242 3y ago
    It's not 100%, no, that's why I used "a lot" and not "all". And even if they are in the US, it's not that hard to be reasonable untrackable with minimal skills. People make mistakes, and maybe every now and then you might catch one person. Whoop-die-doo. It's just not effective or reasonable to track down every single case in depth.

GlibMonkeyDeath 3y ago

Another Black Mirror episode that has come to life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shut_Up_and_Dance_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shut_Up_and_Dance_(Black_Mirro...

jondwillis 3y ago
S3 is truly the chefs kiss vintage Black Mirror season for me. I mean, San Junipero comes directly after it. Even in the quaint year of 2016 though, we unfortunately already had some close examples: Amanda Todd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd Tyler Clementi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi

thex10 3y ago

I recently watched a documentary[0] about the social media dangers for children. It mostly centers around narratives & interviews from a variety of people young and old, and in my opinion decently avoids trite pearl-clutching over vague assumptions about 'technology' or any particular company. Among other things, I am a bit floored by how much child suicide has increased over the past decades. [0] "Childhood 2.0" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He3IJJhFy-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He3IJJhFy-I

jimt1234 3y ago

This story is absolutely horrible. I feel so bad for that kid's parents. I had no idea this kinda thing was happening to dudes; I thought it was all teen girls being tricked into sending nudes, and then being extorted. I don't know what the solution is here. However, every time I think on it, I keep coming back to parent and personal responsibility, which sounds like victim blaming. I kinda hate myself for that, but for every technical solution I can think of, I instantly think of a simple way to circumvent it. So then I wonder how to make the message stick: DON'T SEND NUDES TO ANYONE ON THE INTERNET. EVER!

api 3y ago
There are organized "boiler room" operations doing this to kids at scale. They'll trick a kid into sending nudes or even lie and claim to have them or use AI to generate them, then will try to get the kid to steal their parents' credit cards and send money. Today's dark forest hellscape Internet is not a safe place for young people, and it's getting worse with AI automation of scams and fraud. I wouldn't even post pics of kids online anywhere public since these can be mined to create fake AI blackmail material. Edit: it's fraud all the way down, too. A lot of these boiler rooms use borderline or actual slave labor. The person doing the scam may not be getting anything for it at all, or might even be captive. So it's fraud perpetuated by fraud victims. At the top is usually organized crime.
- jondwillis 3y ago
  Do you have any links detailing these kinds of boiler rooms?
  - barcode_feeder 3y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/myanmar-cyber-scam.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/my... This has a different victim demographic but is broadly similar and was a good read (at least as far as I remember)
arp242 3y ago

trhway 3y ago

[flagged]

mise_en_place 3y ago

It seems that Instagram in particular has a major problem with scamming. It would be safer to have teens consume all of these services as read-only, using an alternative front-end.

chankstein38 3y ago
I've been saying this for a long time. Kids under a certain age should have read-only access to the internet in general. They don't need access to make posts, youtube comments, or on Instagram. I really think this is the solution. If they want to socialize, go outside. The internet is not a toy it's a different dimension of life. The problem with here is it's still a pretty wild west and we don't have enough guards to prevent crime. You wouldn't let your kid walk around Philly's Kensington Ave without you and you sure as hell wouldn't let them walk around talking to everyone there... so why do we let them on platforms that are filled with the same or worse? Sure IG can be harmless but it's also a quick search away from whatever content they can (or can't) imagine.

glorygut123 3y ago

Surely the real problem here, to my non-American eyes, is having easy access to a firearm, no?

telotortium 3y ago
Pretty easy to hang yourself too.
curtis3389 3y ago
It is certainly part of the problem, but it's not the root cause. Yes. Access to and knowledge of firearms dramatically increases the lethality of suicide attempts. But in this case, the kid was scammed for nudes and then blackmailed with them. Without easy access to guns, he could have survived the suicide attempt, but there's no guarantee. The root cause has more to do with childhood, internet access, and maybe even parent-child relationships.
tmdyn 3y ago
To this American's eyes, not mentioning that at all is a glaring omission. I recognize they might not want to in the story of the representative's son (as it might come across as blaming the parents in a recent tragedy) but even though it's for sure relevant in the aggregate.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  It's the third sentence...
halostatue 3y ago
This is a yes-and situation (that is, the issues are orthogonal). There are several similar stories where firearms access is not a factor (Amanda Todd is one of the most well-known, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd). Various social media networks are implicated as factors.
xboxnolifes 3y ago
I've always found this reasoning insane. People are in a position where they want, or feel it's the only option, to kill themselves. And someone suggests the problem is access to the ability to do so, rather than what lead them to feel that way? Guns, drugs, knifes, rope, exhaust, whatever. These always become the focus when a kid kills themselves. How about the circumstances that led to it? Suicide is still a problem is low gun ownership countries.

latexr 3y ago

Faster text only version: https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/30/us/rep-brandon-guffey-instagram-lawsuit-cec/ https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/30/us/rep-brandon-guffey-instag...

jmclnx 3y ago

>But Guffey says he believes that Meta and other social media companies are not being held accountable 100% true. Very sad to hear and I hope he wins. But these companies are very powerful so I doubt things will change. A blatant is what Apple did in the EU after they lost their court case.

whitakerch 3y ago

When things like this happen I always think that the more important problem is the fact that he chose suicide. This sort of thing cannot be gotten rid of entirely. It's impossible. They can always be lured into another messaging system that doesn't track or analyze data at all. I know this would be extremely embarrassing but it is far from life destroying (or at least it should be). Within a year life would've moved on and no one would even care. We all need to better come to terms with this reality and neutralize its impact and the shame of it.

s_dev 3y ago
He didn't choose suicide. He was mercilessly bullied and suicide was his escape hatch. The party that bullied him are culpable for his death. Choosing suicide is if you have a terminal illness and have a lethal injection administered.

BadHumans 3y ago

“If I have a party on my property, and I invite everybody on there, I’m responsible for what happens on my property,” Guffey told CNN. “And for some reason, we treat these digital companies different. These companies hide behind section 230 and say they’re not responsible.” There is a middle ground. If you are just a platform or software, then I don't think you should be liable. I don't think Discourse should be liable for every forum they host. But, when you are in the position of someone like Meta that exist to generate "engagement" to push ads onto people then I think that should change a bit.

elevatedastalt 3y ago
“If I have a party on my property, and I invite everybody on there, I’m responsible for what happens on my property,” I have no specific comment on the actual situation here, but I feel this expectation is also ridiculous, so the analogy doesn't work for me. People shouldn't be responsible for anything that happens on their plot of land if they have no actual hand in it.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  > if they have no actual hand in it. But they have an actual hand in it. Discord is subletting rooms out to moderators and doesn't really have any hand in the content on any particular discord. Meta, however, is pushing their algorithm on everyone on the platform and their employees, in one way or another, handle what content is seen and what content is policed and taken down.
  - BadHumans 3y ago
    You misinterpreted their comment. They are talking about not agreeing with the actual laws around responsibility if something happens on the physical land you own.
- lupire 3y ago
  In reality, it's complicated. You have some legal responsibility for what happens on your property.

dudul 3y ago

> Sextortion predators typically trick young victims, usually teen boys That is an interesting piece of data. Up until now, based on other media reporting, I was under the impression that things like that were disproportionally affecting girls.

DoItToMe81 3y ago

If Instagram can be held liable for not having the magic powers to preemptively police several hundred million people, would it not make more sense to put the man in jail for severe neglect for not giving his son the "Don't send yourself to strangers" talk?