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Meta is the 'single largest market for paedophiles', says New Mexico AG
- sandebert 3y agoI had to shorten the title slightly. Original: Meta is the world’s ‘single largest marketplace for paedophiles’, says New Mexico attorney general
- londons_explore 3y agoI think they mean 'single largest tool for'. One doesn't buy and sell paedophiles on Facebook.
- amarant 3y agoAre you sure? I can't imagine why someone would want to, but I guess if you really want to buy a paedophile, Facebook would probably be the place to do it! "Watching paedophiles get raped" doesn't strike me as a very common kink, but I know a woman who's turned on by the Berlin wall, so there's bound to be someone..
- quickthrower2 3y agoThe polymorphic “for” means “in service of” rather than “that trades” here.
- soco 3y agoI assumed seeing the AG that New Mexico was some company - around here AG is similar to Inc... so like "says New Mexico Inc"
- nottorp 3y agoThe attorney general is an elected position in the US. "Think of the children" is a common campaign theme so i suppose he's going for reelection soon.
- boeingUH60 3y agoThe largest communication platform will inadvertently be the largest for nefarious activities. Parents should work on keeping their kids away from social media, what’s the point of a kid having a Facebook or Instagram anyway?
- bobim 3y agoWell, all the bad things happens in the real world, we can’t keep kids away from it. We need to give them tools to cope with it.
- boeingUH60 3y agoYes we can and protect kids from the real world in many ways, but I believe it should be parents and families handling that, not the state. Social media is a net negative to adults in my opinion, not to talk of children.
- pndy 3y ago> Parents should work on keeping their kids away from social media, what’s the point of a kid having a Facebook or Instagram anyway? Parents are users too and in some cases they're addicted to social media as well. So it may be a quite hard task to make sure kids are having curated presence on the Internet. It may be even impossible because there's also a social pressure to be among peers and participate in whatever activities they do - nowadays mostly online obviously. Nobody wants to be an outsider and no young wants to be policed by an adult - pretty sure that's a prevalent theme across generations. If anything, a social change should come from schools I believe but it may be still a hard task to accomplish. A second or third generation of digital natives is growing up and that's also important thing to consider. No idea which are the most popular networks or activities among the youngest generation but I'd put my bet on tiktok, roblox and discord.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoNot to be insensitive to a sensitive topic, but isn't Meta the 'single largest market for <almost anything>'?
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago1. No 2. Even if it were true, it's irrelevant. Because Meta is supposed to have automated systems that try to prevent this. Which means they're not working, or Meta doesn't care, or both.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoAt the scale of Meta, even if they're 99% effective, 1% still represents tens of thousands. Facebook currently has 3 billion active users per month.
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- reqo 3y agoYes but it does not invalidate the fact!
- coldtea 3y agoKind of does. Facts don't mean anything without perspective.
- croes 3y ago>says he believes the social media company is the “largest marketplace for predators and paedophiles globally”. Doesn't sound like a fact. On FB it's easier to find them compared to Telegram for instance
- wiseowise 3y ago100% of pedos drink water! 100% of pedos breath same air as you and me! Wow, what a fact.
- gmerc 3y agoMeta is the single largest communication platform in the world.
- dathinab 3y agoIt's actually more like 4 interconnected platforms (Facebook+Messenger, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp). Through then I would argue for most regulatory reasons it makes sense to count them as one platform.
- threeseed 3y agoSocial media is not that dissimilar to sex and drugs. At some point we just have to acknowledge that young teenagers are going to use it no matter what. So maybe we should focus more on education and harm prevention as opposed to trying to ban it. Unless of course we ask adults to provide their credit card or driver's license to sign up. Which I suspect they won't.
- hackerlight 3y ago> At some point we just have to acknowledge that young teenagers are going to use it no matter what. We haven't tried to ban it for kids. Social media is a network effect. Currently kids have to go on if they don't want to get outcasted. But if you eliminate the network there isn't the same pull factor.
- soulofmischief 3y agoNo thank you. It was hard enough growing up in a Catholic household with a firewall. My career in remote tech is despite the obstacles placed in my way, not because of them. I would never support similarly gimping children in an increasingly online world. Banning kids from congregating on the internet is a reprehensible idea.
- bartread 3y agoI think the debate is a little more nuanced than this. Any action at scale in this area will deliver both benefits and downsides. What we need to do is look at what action will deliver the greatest net benefit to the most young people. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m not a fan of broad brush action in general, but if it delivers that net benefit I’d be supportive. This is not to invalidate your own experience - it sounds awful - but we can’t make policy decisions at this scale based only on individual experiences. Personally I dread the impact that social media might have on our daughters as they move on to secondary school.
- soulofmischief 3y ago
- i386 3y agoSorry, that would be Discord.
- INTPenis 3y agoThe Attorney General hasn't caught up to what the kids are really using these days.
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- Cthulhu_ 3y agoWhat are you basing that on? Or is that gut feeling / meme?
- i386 3y agoIf you’ve spent any time on discord gaming communities you’d know. Roblox, Minecraft etc are absolutely rife. As an example, the /r/pokemon discord had an ugly situation where predators were exchanging rare pokemon trades with kids for nudes.
- croes 3y agoIs that true or is it just easier to find the posts compared to other tools like Telegram & Co.?
- gonzo41 3y agoIf I were responsible for that company in anyway, I would be working proactively to avoid a headline like that. Do better Meta.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoBut they are. Thousands of people are employed for content moderation on Meta and cooperation with law enforcement (https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-content-moderator-quit-with-blistering-letter-citing-trauma-2021-4?international=true&r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-content-moderator-q...), and that number will likely go up to comply with the new European DSA.
- throwinsta 3y ago[flagged]
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- bell-cot 3y agoSkimming the story...it sounds like the AG's "single largest market" claim is pure fluff. Sure, he's got plenty of evidence that Meta's crawling with pedophiles (and doesn't much care). But there's no mention of data on (pedophile activity on) other platforms. (The NCMEC is mentioned, and they probably have a decent feel for whether the headline's claim is true...but they might be reluctant to talk on this subject.)
- josteink 3y ago> But there's no mention of data on (pedophile activity on) other platforms. Elon Musk has been very clear on that this kind of activity will get you permanently banned. They are also actively following known pedo hashtags across X/Twitter to ensure this kind of content gets wiped, without waiting for individual users to report it first. The difference between Facebook and X seems pretty stark.
- ozim 3y agoI think you underestimate the problem. You can scan for hashtags all day long but bad actors will come up with hashtags that are not on your list rather quickly. The same for facebook groups people can setup like train enthusiasts group that would look like one posting photos of trains and then hide bad content in between. You don’t have even computing power to scan everything.
- handoflixue 3y agoHow are these bad actors coordinating hashtags in a way that can't be detected? If they really have some sort of secret channel that no one else can infiltrate, why not just use that to distribute stuff directly instead of running an evil cabal of hashtags? Surely, even given the evil cabal of hashtags, you could find a lot with simple heuristics? When you ban a tag, track which new new hash tags suddenly explode in popularity. Pull a list of hashtags with an unusually high number of links/images to sites that don't normally get linked? Track the people who follow these hashtags, and see what hashtags they go to next If you actually want to fight the problem, it doesn't require a huge amount of resources - the problem is entirely that Meta has no actual desire to fight the problem (after all, it costs money and doesn't produce any benefit to them)
- nonrandomstring 3y agoDoes this come in the context of this Senate hearing [0] ? According to Guardian (UK) """ tech executives faced four hours of intensive questioning from Congress members """ Four hours doesn't seem like much. My students can sleep through a 4 hour lecture! """ Parents of children who died by suicide after experiencing online harms packed the Senate for the hearing on Wednesday. Senator Lindsey Graham said the event drew "the largest [audience] I've seen in this room". """ If so, this headline is a distraction from the issues at hand. Paedophilia is not what is primarily being discussed here. It's more generally that children are harmed by social media. And as far as I am concerned that is a solid fact. """ In his first remarks, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg cast doubt on the relationship between social media use and a decline in mental health. "The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health," he said. """ Zuck is an outright liar. There are now mountains of exceptionally good research showing a solid causal link between social media use and negative mental health impacts on young people (no, I will not google that for you, please do your own homework). """ Twitter, became the first tech firm to publicly endorse the Stop CSAM Act """ Of course, because CSAM, while abhorrent, is the perfect distraction from the problem that your entire platform is socially corrosive. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2024/jan/31/congress-social-media-hearing-tiktok-meta-twitter-child-safety-latest-updates https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2024/jan/31/cong...
- sirsinsalot 3y agoI agree 100% with your points. Zuck and FB are profiting from damaging the mental health of people. At least with McDonald's, nobody is saying a daily diet of McDonalds is healthy. Whenever I see people saying "no, I will not google that for you, please do your own homework" they basically take a grenade to whatever argument is being made, agreeable nor not. No ... YOU ... cite your sources if you wish to communicate a fact-backed point.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoFair comment. It doesn't sound good does it. I've grown weary, lazy... no exhausted of continually pointing people to things like [0], and the inevitable sealions who will pretend they've been living under a rock for 20 years. Also the new research is coming in so fast it's hard to keep track of. I'm really hoping some people will google that for me too, and I might learn some new ones. [0] https://ledger.humanetech.com/ https://ledger.humanetech.com/
- jug 3y agoA bit surprised over this with mighty suspicious Telegram bot spam that I've come across, and the recent trends in Telegram based revenge porn that often finds its way to underage subjects. I haven't dug deep but Telegram looks like the worst cesspool that I know of that is operating "in the open" (rather than Darknet). But maybe he is talking of contacts and communication that might lead to distribution by other channels? The initial contacts happen on the popular (e.g. Meta) platforms via DM's, and then it's distributed in these stashes on Telegram and whatnot for cash as they groom people? Might be two different sides of this coin so to speak
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoWhat is Telegram bot spam? Bots on other platforms that try to steer users to a bad actor on Telegram? Telegram itself is great and feels like the only "platform" that doesn't jerk ya around.
- herbst 3y agoI suspect the most of this telegram spam to be just that, spam. They have public channels where they post 'normal' legal stuff and then offer 'premium content' for a one time payment, which you will never get. Same shit was done forever on the DN. I guess many people think stealing from pedos is somewhat more moralic or so.
- contrarian1234 3y agoI don't expect logic to follow "think of the children", but what's the argument for a marketplace? So criminals can send pornography to each other b/c it's a communication platform. But how do they use facebook to exchange money for pornography? As far as I know you can't buy digital media on Facebook? If people are just using it as a medium to communicate and then doing deals offline or through other channels then it's about as absurd as holding the phone companies accountable for all deals arranged by phone
- slimebot80 3y agoNo doubt Meta has issues here, like all social platforms. But Meta at least has some level of verification and active moderation. You can't generally get away with posting explicit porn for any amount of time. Try signing up to Meta with a disposable email address or without a phone number. Sure these things can be side stepped, but for the average person it's a hurdle, and ultimately many petty criminals will be identifying themselves if it came to that. On the other hand Xitter is so DESPERATE for you to sign up they don't care about dodgy emails or even insist on phone numbers any more. And, let me tell you, Xitter makes ZERO effort to even LOOK at porn, so hard core porn is THRIVING on there, including stuff that leans heavily on youth taboos. I don't click or search for illegal stuff, but I've certainly scrolled past some dodgy posts. It's ridiculous how Xitter is getting away with this while Musk is fully and openly demonising Zuck. Sure Zuck has a history of being an arse, but this new wave of tech bro reality bubble is just... a whole new level of insane.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoThey don't care what steps are being taken or that they've taken down a trillion pedos, they care about results. The fact is that despite their efforts pedos still run hogwild on Facebook. They will not change unless the incentives change.
- dathinab 3y agoPutting aside the obvious thing that anyone hurting children in a sexual way, weather direct or indirect by financially supporting it should be appropriately punished. What has me wondering in the article is that they speak about the platform Meta. But Meta is like Alphabet a parent company which owned multiple platforms, something I think most people are aware of to some degree (like Facebook+Messenger are one platform, Instagram is another, probably Threads is it's own platform, too). Now for some contexts it's reasonable to treat them as one (most legal regulatory ones), but in others (e.g. blame framing) it can be misleading. Meta owns one of the biggest social networks (Facebook is still the biggest when it comes to certain categories, like older people, connecting Family, self help and hobby groups outside of the tech sector etc.) one of the biggest "picture" platforms and two(!) of the largest messengers. So absolute numbers can be very misleading, like they THEORETICALLY could be the safest platforms for children doing the most against pedophile but still have the largest absolute number simply by shear total user count. Similar not clarifying what 'market for pedophiles' means is an issue like does it mean Meta seriously messed up and someone should go for prison for it, or does it mean people providing pedophilia services elsewhere use it so that customer can find them by providing fully legal content but sneaking in some "subtle but telling hints" about what kind of people they are (e.g. something equivalent to large black leather boots with red laces hinting that you are a neo-nazi in Germany, but sometimes it's just a unlucky coincidence and the person is not). Similar misleading can be the use of absolute numbers, Meta owns one of the biggest social networks (Facebook is still the biggest when it comes to certain categories, like older people, connecting Family, self help and hobby groups outside of the tech sector etc.) one of the biggest "picture" platforms and two(!) of the largest messengers (which tend to exist at the border line between social platforms and "just" modern sms). The main question is, is that case done to actually help protecting children or is it another iteration of abusing the suffering of children to push for more legal espionage or other questionable goals with no intend at all to do anything which effectively would help children? It pains me that we even have to question that. But too many lobbyist have abused the suffering of children to try to push through bad things, sometimes things which even would have made it worse for the same children they claim they want to protect. Anyway while there are many gaps in the article it seems that it might be a well intended which would be nice but then it's done by a AG which is meant to act profit orientated which huge that looks sus flag. Let's just hope that whatever happens the situation does actually get better for children. But then there are so many many things which can be done in the US to reduce child abuse which are systematically ignored by so many of the people claiming to work to protect children it's really sad. But then in part of the US grooming and child marriages is still a think even thought it's basically legalized pedophilia, like it's just absurd.
- EasyMark 3y agoThat might have been true before the rise of tiktok...