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I feel like if people wanted to counter this push, the more effective route would be addressing the "for the children" motivations seriously rather than fully d

by slg 3mo ago

I feel like if people wanted to counter this push, the more effective route would be addressing the "for the children" motivations seriously rather than fully dismissing them. You could cut the legs out of this effort by capturing the part of the population that does have an honest desire to protect children by offering an alternative that actually protects children. Instead, that concern is treated as 100% disingenuous which pushes many normal people to the side of wanting to enact these controls. This is a political problem, you need to solve it with politics.

matthewdgreen 3mo ago
I know a number of people who have gone down this route, including Senators. For example, here's Senator Wyden's proposal to add $5 billion in mandatory funding to investigate and target sexual abusers [1]. The problem with these efforts is that they're expensive: fighting child exploitation requires enormous amounts of funding. Guess what doesn't require billions of dollars? Mandatory scanning paid for by tech companies, followed by dumping the billions of hits they produce [2] on overworked police and clearinghouses that mostly ignore them. [1] https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-eshoo-fitzpatrick-reintroduce-bipartisan-legislation-to-protect-children-from-online-exploitation https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-eshoo... [2] https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/cybersecurity/surge-in-online-crimes-against-children-driven-by-ai-and-evolving-exploitation-tactics-ncmec-reports/ https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/cybersecurity/su...
- slg 3mo ago
  Then fund the initiative by taxing those same tech companies. "This problem is hard or expensive to address" does not assuage the desire to fix the problem. There are countless reasons to be against these chat controls, but it's easy for a layperson to understand how they would address their specific concerns. The only way to effectively counter that is providing an alternative that does a better job.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 3mo ago
    > Then fund the initiative by taxing those same tech companies. The politicians needed to change tax laws are owned by the tech companies. This is why its a hard problem. The tech companies set the rules now. Getting politicians elected that aren't owned by tech companies is also hard because tech companies effectively control all the information.
    - slg 3mo ago
      If this is your belief, the only reasonable conclusion is that time spent on fighting these chat control initiatives is wasted because it's all downstream of the power of the tech oligarchy. That's the battle you should be fighting rather than trying to play whack-a-mole on individual proposals like this.
InvertedRhodium 3mo ago
I don't think I agree - "think of the children" is not primarily a rational argument, it's more an emotional and political lever that is used to frame anyone in opposition as being opposed to more child safety, which is very obviously a bad thing. It creates a moral asymmetry where one group is "defending children" and another group is "defending an abstract concept", but group A wins out primarily due to millions of years of human evolution. It has very little (IMO) to do with the actual underlying concepts being debated.
- slg 3mo ago
  >It creates a moral asymmetry where one group is "defending children" and another group is "defending an abstract concept", but group A wins out primarily due to millions of years of human evolution. It has very little (IMO) to do with the actual underlying concepts being debated. You aren't actually engaging with why group A wins. Those "millions of years of human evolution" actually instilled in people a desire to protect children.
  - msm_ 3mo ago
    Of course, just like it instilled a desire to consume a lot of calorie-dense food. "Desire to protect the children" in this case is a knee-jerk reaction, or a thought terminating cliche. For example, how many children will this actually protect? How many children will this harm? How many adults will be harmed by inevitable side-effects that arise? Those questions are not discussed or even considered.
    - slg 3mo ago
      Because those questions are meaningless to many people if you aren't offering any solution of your own to address their concerns. For the people who genuinely care about this issue, an obvious response you will get is "how many children are you willing to allow to be sex trafficked to preserve your privacy?" You can't win a debate by claiming your concerns invalidate their concerns. You need to actually engage with them on the issue they care about.
AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
> You could cut the legs out of this effort by capturing the part of the population that does have an honest desire to protect children by offering an alternative that actually protects children. There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem. So you can't give them something that does that. The thing they're proposing doesn't even do that. Nothing does. And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again. What you need instead is to identify and strip power and resources from the people who keep proposing it.
- slg 3mo ago
  >There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem. Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response? >And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again. I'm not even disagreeing with this point, I'm simply saying your response can't just be "no, they are the bad guy". That is not a winning political message. That's why the democratic socialist faction of the Democratic Party in the US is growing in popularity. You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.
  - AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
    > Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response? I'm taking it as a given that we shouldn't do things that aren't cost effective, because that's what "cost effective" means. There are things we could do that would cost six trillion dollars in order to save one life, and we're not going to do those things, because it would be patently unreasonable and cost dramatically more lives than that as a result of what those resources would have to be allocated from. It's possible that there are cost effective things we could do that we're not currently doing, but those things tend to be uncontroversial, so when someone uncovers one it generally does actually get enacted and becomes the status quo. That's the issue: Name any given thing you suppose we should do instead of Chat Control. Enact it, as many of them already have been. Tomorrow they propose Chat Control again, so what now? Offering and even enacting an alternative hasn't satisfied them, they keep trying to pass it anyway. > You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions. What are you supposed to do when you've not only offered solutions but enacted and implemented them already and your opponent is a fear monger who will never be satisfied because they have an ulterior motive for their dangerous and ineffective proposal?
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
ClumsyPilot 3mo ago
>> would be addressing the "for the children" motivations seriously rather than fully dismissing them Like actually finding and arresting Eipstein clients? There’s no need to protect children when it’s higher ranking people doing the crime I guess
- slg 3mo ago
  >Like actually finding and arresting Eipstein clients? Genuinely yes. It's a viable political strategy to respond to this with a redirection towards Epstein. "How can we waste time on these chat controls when there are obviously people guilty of the worst version of these crimes that go unpunished due to their money and connections? We need to focus on those criminals instead." Once again, this is a political problem, it needs to be solved with politics.

by slg 3mo ago

matthewdgreen 3mo ago

I know a number of people who have gone down this route, including Senators. For example, here's Senator Wyden's proposal to add $5 billion in mandatory funding to investigate and target sexual abusers [1]. The problem with these efforts is that they're expensive: fighting child exploitation requires enormous amounts of funding. Guess what doesn't require billions of dollars? Mandatory scanning paid for by tech companies, followed by dumping the billions of hits they produce [2] on overworked police and clearinghouses that mostly ignore them. [1] https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-eshoo-fitzpatrick-reintroduce-bipartisan-legislation-to-protect-children-from-online-exploitation https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-eshoo... [2] https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/cybersecurity/surge-in-online-crimes-against-children-driven-by-ai-and-evolving-exploitation-tactics-ncmec-reports/ https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/cybersecurity/su...

slg 3mo ago
Then fund the initiative by taxing those same tech companies. "This problem is hard or expensive to address" does not assuage the desire to fix the problem. There are countless reasons to be against these chat controls, but it's easy for a layperson to understand how they would address their specific concerns. The only way to effectively counter that is providing an alternative that does a better job.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3mo ago
  > Then fund the initiative by taxing those same tech companies. The politicians needed to change tax laws are owned by the tech companies. This is why its a hard problem. The tech companies set the rules now. Getting politicians elected that aren't owned by tech companies is also hard because tech companies effectively control all the information.
  - slg 3mo ago
    If this is your belief, the only reasonable conclusion is that time spent on fighting these chat control initiatives is wasted because it's all downstream of the power of the tech oligarchy. That's the battle you should be fighting rather than trying to play whack-a-mole on individual proposals like this.

InvertedRhodium 3mo ago

I don't think I agree - "think of the children" is not primarily a rational argument, it's more an emotional and political lever that is used to frame anyone in opposition as being opposed to more child safety, which is very obviously a bad thing. It creates a moral asymmetry where one group is "defending children" and another group is "defending an abstract concept", but group A wins out primarily due to millions of years of human evolution. It has very little (IMO) to do with the actual underlying concepts being debated.

slg 3mo ago
>It creates a moral asymmetry where one group is "defending children" and another group is "defending an abstract concept", but group A wins out primarily due to millions of years of human evolution. It has very little (IMO) to do with the actual underlying concepts being debated. You aren't actually engaging with why group A wins. Those "millions of years of human evolution" actually instilled in people a desire to protect children.
- msm_ 3mo ago
  Of course, just like it instilled a desire to consume a lot of calorie-dense food. "Desire to protect the children" in this case is a knee-jerk reaction, or a thought terminating cliche. For example, how many children will this actually protect? How many children will this harm? How many adults will be harmed by inevitable side-effects that arise? Those questions are not discussed or even considered.
  - slg 3mo ago
    Because those questions are meaningless to many people if you aren't offering any solution of your own to address their concerns. For the people who genuinely care about this issue, an obvious response you will get is "how many children are you willing to allow to be sex trafficked to preserve your privacy?" You can't win a debate by claiming your concerns invalidate their concerns. You need to actually engage with them on the issue they care about.

AnthonyMouse 3mo ago

> You could cut the legs out of this effort by capturing the part of the population that does have an honest desire to protect children by offering an alternative that actually protects children. There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem. So you can't give them something that does that. The thing they're proposing doesn't even do that. Nothing does. And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again. What you need instead is to identify and strip power and resources from the people who keep proposing it.

slg 3mo ago
>There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem. Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response? >And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again. I'm not even disagreeing with this point, I'm simply saying your response can't just be "no, they are the bad guy". That is not a winning political message. That's why the democratic socialist faction of the Democratic Party in the US is growing in popularity. You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
  > Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response? I'm taking it as a given that we shouldn't do things that aren't cost effective, because that's what "cost effective" means. There are things we could do that would cost six trillion dollars in order to save one life, and we're not going to do those things, because it would be patently unreasonable and cost dramatically more lives than that as a result of what those resources would have to be allocated from. It's possible that there are cost effective things we could do that we're not currently doing, but those things tend to be uncontroversial, so when someone uncovers one it generally does actually get enacted and becomes the status quo. That's the issue: Name any given thing you suppose we should do instead of Chat Control. Enact it, as many of them already have been. Tomorrow they propose Chat Control again, so what now? Offering and even enacting an alternative hasn't satisfied them, they keep trying to pass it anyway. > You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions. What are you supposed to do when you've not only offered solutions but enacted and implemented them already and your opponent is a fear monger who will never be satisfied because they have an ulterior motive for their dangerous and ineffective proposal?

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

ClumsyPilot 3mo ago

>> would be addressing the "for the children" motivations seriously rather than fully dismissing them Like actually finding and arresting Eipstein clients? There’s no need to protect children when it’s higher ranking people doing the crime I guess

slg 3mo ago
>Like actually finding and arresting Eipstein clients? Genuinely yes. It's a viable political strategy to respond to this with a redirection towards Epstein. "How can we waste time on these chat controls when there are obviously people guilty of the worst version of these crimes that go unpunished due to their money and connections? We need to focus on those criminals instead." Once again, this is a political problem, it needs to be solved with politics.