
37-Year-Old Mom Spent Seven Days Online as an 11-Year-Old Girl - maxaf
https://medium.com/@sloane_ryan/im-a-37-year-old-mom-i-spent-seven-days-online-as-an-11-year-old-girl-here-s-what-i-learned-9825e81c8e7d
======
Ewigkeit
The first time I was catcalled I was six. My friend and I were playing dress
up and we put on very messy red lipstick and blush. She left to have lunch and
home and we agreed to meet after lunch on the corner of street, her house was
next-door to mine. I guess I didn't wash off all of the makeup, but a group of
grown men shouted and whistled at me then quickly drove away. At 11 I went on
short runs close to home, I was whistled at most days. When I turned 15 and
took the bus to work at a nearby mall, I was often asked if I needed a ride by
older men, and often had to brush off comments or offers by older men, twice
they had sat next to me on the bus blocking my way out, I had to tell the bus
driver and stand up on my seat to climb to the seat behind me. When I first
went on the internet I tried asking people about about majoring in Physics and
what their work was like, I was in high school and if they found out I was a
girl they would usually try to convince me to date them, send a dick pic. I
even had an offer from a 60 year old to fly me out to live with them. I think
men have no idea that girls and women experience this.

~~~
agumonkey
No offense but think about the other side. I'm very lightly kidding here, I
remember making a female account on a website to assist some girl (say an
ancestor of tinder) and remember being washed by a torrent of messages from
guys. It was a shock, I never ever imagined it was possible to get so much
"attention" in so few. I understood a thing or two about girl's life all of a
sudden. I also realized how our world were different, because at that time, on
a myspace like website, I honestly wrote hundreds of long and fun message to
women and maybe got 3 answers total. Men are frustrated, women are harassed.
It's an absurd situation in a way.

ps: my story is very slightly related to the thread and your example as I was
not a minor nor made a minor female profile. Strangers annoying young girls
should be stopped immediately.

~~~
peterwwillis
This comment is like if someone said they watched their parents burned alive
in a house fire and it changed the person for life, and someone else replied
"yeah, but think about the other side, my brother is a firefighter and he
works so hard..." Sure, let's minimize the first thing and talk about
something different.

~~~
adventskalender
No it is not nearly at the same level as "parents burnt alive".

------
bengale
> They’re all children. And like every case of abuse, a child is never at
> fault.

This is accurate, first and foremost before what I say could be interpreted as
shifting the blame from these perverts. But one thing not mentioned in this
article is why an 11 year old would be on the internet at all. I think we need
to have a serious think about whether it makes sense to expose a child to
everything to world has to offer, unguided, before they're _much_ older than
11.

There was a lot of optimism about the internet, or more specifically the web I
guess, as it developed. But realistically it's not the utopian vision many
expected it to become, large parts of it are a cess pool.

Back when I was younger the idea that it would aid in education, and make it
easy for children to research any topic. Is that truly the case? I'd argue
not, misinformation is rife, could any child really be expected to critically
examine this stuff unguided? I think we were better with something like
encarta to be completely honest.

Social media is an abomination, I'm not convinced many adults have the
faculties required to use it in a non destructive way. How many of us have
parents that seem to be completely radicalised by one Facebook group or
another? We know that because they won't shut up about it, so what's it doing
to a bunch of kids that don't share what they're reading with their parents?
God knows.

This is all before we admit that children can be really quite cruel, which
gets magnified by them not actually seeing the result of their words/actions.
Putting a screen in-between the bullying is a sure fire way to make it much
worse. Couple that with the isolation that's felt by this fake 'social
connection' and its a recipe for disaster.

I really worry about the future if our education systems can't be retooled to
teach children critical thinking, and if we don't start to change the way we
look at the internet to realise its way more dangerous than we expected it to
be.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
You might have an exaggerated sense of what kind of control parents can have
over their children, and an underestimation of how pervasive Internet tech is
among preteens.

My 12 year daughter, for example, is one of only a few kids in her class that
don't have their own phone. And it's been like this for a couple years. Her
friends think we're dragons for restricting her and her brother to 1 hour a
day. Throughout the school day she is getting access to school iPads for 'free
time' where it's open season on YouTube and the like.

The ages 11 and up are when parents get a harsh education in just how little
'control' they can (or should?) have over their kids. The best bet is to make
sure there's open channels of communication and enough mutual respect that
your kids will come to you when confused or upset, and maybe even listen to
your advice. Trying to clamp down on them and control their access to the
Internet (in an era where most of their peers have almost unfettered access)
doesn't encourage that trust. We've learned the hard way.

~~~
shantly
Our (allegedly very good for our state) elementary school gives the
Kindergarteners iPads. Not to take home—I think they wait until 3rd grade or
something for that complete fucking nonsense—but during much of the school
day. Their free time in lower grades is iPad shit. Mediocre edutainment games.
Having the iPad read books to them. That ends up being quite a bit of their
day. Meanwhile they have under half an hour of recess. Talk about screwed up
priorities.

~~~
me_me_me
Do you know what occupies kids really well so you don't have to do your job?
Ding, ding, ding.

In all honestly knowing how harmful those devices are to development of kids
this should be banned. Do your job and take care of kids that were trusted to
you.

------
atq2119
I appreciate that they included real examples of conversations they captured
in the article, as disturbing as that may be.

A lot of the conversation around sexual predation, especially around child
porn, is problematic from a democracy point of view: You get authorities
asking for more power (usually, more draconian surveillance laws), without
showing evidence of what it is that they are supposedly fighting -- and of
course, nobody wants to ask too strongly for such evidence being shown, lest
they be accused of being a potential predator as well. But we can't just give
authorities more power just based on their say-so. Hence, my appreciation for
the choice to release some of that material in the article. I'm against more
draconian laws, but I do think people should be able to make up their own
minds, and the discussions we have about those issues _should_ be more open.

~~~
api
This nicely shows that they don't need more surveillance. A simple honey trap
appears to fill up like a bug zapper tray in Mississippi in July.

No dark web, no Hollywood hacker shit. Just go on social media and pretend to
be a pretty underage girl and fish meet barrel. These days you could automate
this with a good adversarial neural net (including image generation!) that
would engage predators and let them incriminate themselves.

The authorities don't do this because they don't _really_ care. Child abuse is
a political dog whistle but it's not a real priority. As with many child care
issues there is an unspoken classism at work too: that only happens to the
children of less responsible lower class people (which is false).

~~~
Causality1
The constitutionality of such a honeytrap is not exactly clear though since
the person isn't trying to molest an actual child. It's a bit like leaving a
fake gun on the street and then prosecuting a person who picks it up and tries
to shoot somebody for attempted murder. Are you still guilty of a crime if you
only think you were going to commit a crime? If someone lies to you that they
are allergic to peanuts and you secretly give them peanuts is that attempted
murder? If you download a song that you weren't aware is in the public domain,
is that attempted copyright infringement?

~~~
RHSeeger
> Are you still guilty of a crime if you only think you were going to commit a
> crime?

I'd argue that it's worth discussing whether it even matters. The goal of the
legal system _should_ be to make society safer. Taking a sexual predator off
the streets does make society safer, even if they didn't actually commit the
crime. They did _try_ to commit the crime; they believed they were committing
it.

Admittedly, this falls at least partially into the realm of pre-crime. Is it
fair to lock someone up because they are _going_ to commit a crime? It's in
the middle ground, because they did believe they were committing the crime.
But it's still also very much in the gray area as far as morality is concerned
too.

~~~
pmoriarty
If the point is to protect society, why are they ever let out of jail?

~~~
lopmotr
Because criminals are part of society and also need protecting from the
government. Without that concept, we'd just have the death penalty for every
crime, no matter how minor.

------
rexgallorum2
This is nothing but covert advertising. Almost everyone here seems to have
missed this fact. Re-read the 'article' carefully. This text was carefully
crafted to go viral by scaring parents.

Again, this is not about a 'police sting' or anything like that. It is about a
'project' (stunt) carried out by a private company that sells software for
monitoring kids. The author works for the same company.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
The text was certainly crafted to go viral (what in the world is Pete
providing security _against_?), but the claim they're making is still very
troubling. If a typical 11 year old girl is getting multiple messages from
pedophiles every time she posts a picture on Instagram, that doesn't fit my
understanding at all and has very serious implications.

We shouldn't rule out that they're being substantially misleading, but I don't
think we should just assume that either.

~~~
nikanj
There's about 25 million kids between 12 and 17 in the US (
[https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-
popul...](https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-population-
by-age-
group#detailed/1/any/false/37,871,870,573,869,36,868,867,133,38/62,63,64,6,4693/419,420))

I find it dubious that each one of them gets over 50 predators attacking them
the moment the post a selfie on Instagram. Either a small number of pedophiles
would be targeting thousands of kids per hour, or there are millions of
pedophiles.

The basic premise of the article rings true (posting selfies on can lead to
getting attacked by predators), but the numbers are just ludicrous.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I think you’re right. My intuitive guess of how many teenage kids there are
would have been a full order of magnitude lower. At that count, even adjusting
for not everyone being on Instagram, I agree there’s no way the numbers can
check out.

------
bloopernova
That's deeply upsetting. For those readers who haven't read the article but
were considering it, I suggest you skip it if you've been the victim of sexual
abuse.

I wish I could say something constructive, something about a panacea or
partial solution to what this woman experiences while posing as a child. I
know that VPNs, Tor, Proxies and the like will hide the determined, but I wish
that something could be done about this.

Oh, and for those of you who may feel the need to say "don't let kids on the
internet". That's almost impossible to enforce. Kids visit other kids houses,
sleepovers, libraries, schools, etc etc. They get exposed to this stuff and
it's horrible.

~~~
api
Pioneers in the wilderness told their kids about mountain lions, bears, and
wolves. We have to tell our kids about this. We can't helicopter them 24/7,
especially as they approach their teens.

~~~
zbentley
I think this is qualitatively different than environmental hazards. This is
other people, maliciously intruding into kids lives and attacking them. It's
less like wolves than it is like an enemy tribe, nation, or army intent on
attacking defenseless people.

~~~
whiddershins
You are right that it is qualitatively different, and I think this makes it
more relevant.

The biggest predator of humans is humans. If we wander around being naive
about this fact and acting like it is an outlier, or an exception, we can't
deal with it realistically ... we fail to take precautions and then
emotionally overreact when we are wronged.

------
newarticle1000
That's alarming. Things are way worse than when I grew up using the internet
in the late 90s and early aughts. The worst things I can remember were getting
GNAA spam on my Xanga blog at 12 years old and later on the usual Omegle and
Chat Roulette exhibitionism; gross, offensive, but easy enough to dismiss and
move on. I can recall being solicited for nudes by a much older man at age 16
over IRC but I was old enough to know to just block the creep and move on.
Clearly social media has magnified the issue to far more dangerous levels and
lets predators find the easiest targets.

When I was young, I was cautioned against giving away personal information
like my age or any personal photos. What happened to that mindset?

Obviously, nobody should let their 11 year old child make an instagram
account. It isn't even permitted by the terms of service.

I grew up using internet with zero parental supervision, but there's no way I
could do the same with my kids until they're at least 16 and capable of
recognizing danger. Hell, you can get into plenty of trouble on the internet
at age 16 too. Social media has made the internet a worse place.

~~~
Izkata
> When I was young, I was cautioned against giving away personal information
> like my age or any personal photos. What happened to that mindset?

Seemed to me to happen right around when Facebook got popular. When it was
college-only a real identity didn't seem that big a deal, since you were
linked with people you already kind-of had access to, and anyone who could see
who you were you could also see who they were. But then when it went public
the dam broke - hundreds of thousands of people suddenly unmasked on the
public internet.

------
danielhitome
Great work done by this company, but I wonder why social networks like
Instagram isn’t doing this themselves to protect children? If a paid service
has caught so many already, you can imagine the scale of the problem... Hope
I’m wrong and they are doing it.

~~~
danharaj
The dark secret is that no social media company would clamp down on such a
lucrative source of user engagement. A lot of the _early_ adoption of social
media platforms is by young people and... well, you see?

~~~
krapp
Just because pedophiles are common on social media doesn't mean they're
particularly lucrative as a demographic . It's not as if they can legally form
pro-pedo groups and chat and share child porn and create a social graph around
their interests that would be of any value to advertisers.

~~~
foxylad
Your comment triggered the thought that blackmail is INCREDIBLY lucrative.

So much so that I'm surprised it hasn't already happened. If _favourite rogue
state_ infiltrated FB/IG enough to do what Bark is doing on a system level...
that's a scary amount of leverage.

And it's difficult to see how our society could protect against it.

~~~
bagacrap
Leverage against some random dirtbag who lives in a trailer? The bigwigs are
using services like Epstein's, not Instagram spam. And they successfully shut
down that potential threat when he was compromised.

~~~
int_19h
There's a lot of spectrum between a trailer and Epstein. And you don't
necessarily need people in Epstein's social circle, for such a scheme to pay
off. Industrial espionage and sabotage doesn't require bigwigs - worker bees
that happen to have access to things just so that they can do their daily job
can do a lot.

------
hendersoon
I went into the article expecting it to look like the old To Catch a Predator
TV show, which really bordered on entrapment in many cases, trying to make
good TV happen, but that isn't the case here at all. They just put up an
innocent profile and were immediately bombarded. Good stuff.

Using these chats to train machine learning corpus on child grooming is a
great idea too. Social networks could use that data trivially and at very low
cost by having parents opt-in to having their childrens' communications
automatically monitored and alerting the parents when a conversation trips a
threshold.

You've got to figure anyone harassing children on open channels isn't exactly
a master criminal and will get caught sooner or later anyway. But harm done is
substantial so you want it to be sooner, not later.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Note, though, that the author's company does sell online child safety as their
main product. I'm not saying I think they played any particular tricks, but...
I dunno, To Catch a Predator made it sound like they just put up innocent
profiles too.

~~~
hendersoon
If that data ends up being their real product entrapping people like the TV
show would be counterproductive, so the incentives are right. Hopefully the
work in the article is representative of what they're actually doing.

------
born2discover
This is disturbing on so many levels. I can't even begin to understand how
disturbed one must be to be willing to do something like that.

A fair warning to those who haven't read the article yet but are planning to:
Be warned that it contains very explicit elements, not for the feeble of
heart.

~~~
RHSeeger
I was reading a story a while ago (I don't recall enough about it to even
search to provide a link) that talked to some pedophiles. Specifically, people
who had the urge to interact sexually with young people. It talked about how
some of them knew this was a bad urge and acted to counter it. One of the ways
they did that was to get hold of fictional child pornography (stories,
drawings, animations, etc). This allowed them to feed their urge without
hurting anyone.

The idea behind the disucssion/story was that pedophilia (the desire) is a
condition (like any other we treat; alcoholism, depression, etc). Treating it
like that, looking for ways with the urge to avoid hurting people, was a
reasonable approach. It was argued that making such fictional items illegal
hurt, rather than helped, children; because it took away non-harmful outlets
for the desires.

~~~
claudiawerner
The thing is that the catharsis theory, that is, the theory that providing
harmless "outlets" is a way to manage the desire, is not supported by any
evidence. On the other hand, Patrick Galbraith has done work with Japanese
fictional child porn communities and found that the communities tend to strike
a very powerful distinction between real desire and fictional desire. They
just don't view real children in the same "space", mentally, as fictional
children in pornographic comic books.

------
ryeights
I'm not generally a fan of advertisement by fearmongering. Why would an 11
year old have an Instagram account anyway?

~~~
jfk13
> Why would an 11 year old have an Instagram account anyway?

Because we've saturated our society with messages telling them this is how to
be popular and successful.

------
MPSimmons
Yeah... I can't finish this. It's... too much. I'm glad that there are people
who can work with law enforcement to help get these people off of the
internet, but I couldn't do it.

~~~
zozbot234
Having skimmed the article, I'm increasingly convinced that the perpetrators
of this sort of online "grooming" are largely sociopaths/psychopaths/dark
triad personalities. The whole M.O. seems to fit that characterization quite
closely, AFAICT. It's very helpful to have these chat logs to look at even
though they're so disturbing, it lets us know more about what makes these
folks tick and how they arrange their predatory activities.

~~~
Fjolsvith
One doesn't have to be a sociopath or psychopath to be attracted to children
or thrilled sexually by the taboo.

Trying to put a label on these people will make you overlook the ones who
don't fit.

~~~
zozbot234
I'm _specifically_ talking about the grooming and manipulation. That's
precisely the sort of stuff sociopaths and psychopaths do as a matter of
course. People who are just looking for a sexual "thrill" of sorts, by and
large, don't engage in predatory behavior especially not of this disturbing
sort.

~~~
hendersoon
Sure they do. Try putting a fake attractive female 18+ year old profile up on
Instagram, you'll get bombarded by predators and dick pics there too. Just not
_child_ predators. Many men act monstrously on the internet, but that doesn't
make them psychopaths, just losers. Something about the distance makes that
sort of behavior more palatable to them.

~~~
zozbot234
How many of them will try to "groom" you like we see in the article, though?
I'd argue that there is a qualitative difference between that and "losers"
just trying to engage someone who's also unambiguously of age.

~~~
hendersoon
Imagine you're the sort of guy to slip into the DMs of a random hot of-age
woman and she actually replies and engages you in conversation.

"Grooming" is nothing more than establishing a relationship and rapport with
the aim being naked pics and ultimately in-person sex. The difference is the
target here is a child, and thus more easily manipulated.

Just ask any of your attractive of-age female friends how many times they get
harassed on social media by random guys they don't know if they have their DMs
open. Which they probably don't.

My point is these people are acting like many horny guys on the internet. The
difference is their targets are kids, but that doesn't make them psychopaths,
it makes them pedophiles.

~~~
reallythough1
I find it quite horrifying that you’d read an article containing a description
of an adult man _literally teaching an 11-year-old what a blowjob is_ , after
she told him she didn’t know, and follow that up with “meh, grooming is the
same thing as Instagram courtship just like your attractive female friends
experience, no psychopathy here.”

You don’t know what grooming is. Grooming is taking a kid to get ice cream for
years while laying the groundwork for what you have in mind. The article shows
clear grooming attempts on an accelerated timeframe. Please don’t ever speak
about grooming authoritatively again, especially when others in this audience
_have been groomed_.

~~~
hendersoon
Calm yourself. I put it in quotes for a reason. That's a completely different
animal than cold-messaging kids on Instagram.

------
leetrout
> Baby. They keep calling her baby without an ounce of irony.

That is absolutely disgusting. It is heart wrenching and stomach turning to
read this exchange of messages. I guess I knew this kind of stuff happens but
to have it right in your face and read it; it is almost surreal that people
are this depraved.

------
yread
There is this new documentary film (sorry Czech only:
[https://www.csfd.cz/film/720753-v-siti/prehled/](https://www.csfd.cz/film/720753-v-siti/prehled/)
) where they did something similar

~~~
mormegil
Right, see e.g. [https://variety.com/2019/film/festivals/caught-in-the-net-
ji...](https://variety.com/2019/film/festivals/caught-in-the-net-ji-
hlava-1203384625/)

------
generalpass
Is there any independent verification of any of the claims of this article?

I am well aware that terrible stuff happens on the World Wide Web and it may
well be that Bark was legitimately founded to stop that stuff, but as a
natural skeptic I'm at least a tad concerned that this is self-published by a
company that sells a service to catch these kinds of activities.

Were there no journalists interested in covering this story?

Is Bark profitable?

~~~
sjy
I haven’t seen anyone independently verify this article specifically, but it
seems pretty consistent with the reporting the New York Times has been doing
on this issue over the last few months, notably this article which I think was
pretty popular on HN:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-
sex-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-
abuse.html)

------
lopmotr
Here's a funny idea. How much is children's psychological damage from exposure
to sexual ideas and images innate, and how much is cultural? Taboos about body
parts don't seem to be entirely universal. I wonder if we could solve all
child sexual abuse "simply" by treating sex as being as natural and harmless
as eating food, which is also a very intimate and vulnerable activity that
people have strong desires for. Are humans really wired to emotionally self-
destruct as a result of experiencing the wrong kind of sexual behavior, or do
we do it because of societal pressure?

The revulsion that people experiencing true homophobia have towards gays looks
a lot like the revulsion many people here are expressing about pedophilia. The
justifications are a little different, but the emotions look similar. It's
nothing like the feelings people have towards objectively worse things like
death. They talk about car accidents, disease, and even murder without that
sense of disgust.

~~~
clarry
> How much is children's psychological damage from exposure to sexual ideas
> and images innate, and how much is cultural?

I'm not actually convinced there is any damage.

Dunno, around where I lived, every kid in school knew what sex is by the age
of 10-12, boys probably had found porn magazines in the woods, and would've
been excited if some older lady with actual boobs sent them nudes through a
computer.

I think parents are way more shocked and traumatized than their kids are.

~~~
lopmotr
It seems to affect different people differently. Some commit suicide and blame
their childhood abuse so it was probably bad for them (or they were led to
believe it was bad). But perhaps those severe cases also had severe
psychological and/or physical abuse or neglect. The sexual aspect gets adults
all angry but those other things are extremely common and usually perfectly
legal while also ruining people's lives.

------
pas
tl;dr: there are people starting conversations with accounts that clearly seem
to be childrens' on Instagram, sending unsolicited and very sexually explicit
content, and basically openly requesting CP.

This is serious and naturally the extreme proposed solutions are all flawed,
yet we as a society ought to spend more energy managing and ultimately solving
this. (Education of kids about exploitation, better tech solutions to prevent
these messages reaching them - reputation systems on social media sites - for
establishing contactability for both senders and recipients. Long term
probably some serious genetic engineering to make consentability a must for
sexual attraction, and whatever out of the box ideas are out there.)

~~~
lopmotr
Just a feedback. Your TLDR is ambiguous about whose account clearly seems to
be childrens'. I took the wrong meaning from it at first and thought you meant
the fake children were sending things.

------
awinter-py
Kind of fascinating that private companies are operating stings

I don't have a clear opinion on the validity of a sting as an argument, but I
suspect every large platform with a crime or fraud problem is doing some kind
of counterintelligence work.

------
anoplus
This phenomena is so common it makes me think the educational system can do
more. I somehow feel that many of those guys have severe distortion of
reality. Like they are completely unaware they are doing something wrong. I
mean it may sound odd, but in addition to protect children and catch
predictors (important), we may talk about this stuff in schools and prevent
those guys from becoming predators.

There is something about the online world that blurs red lines.

p.s having said that, this post is beneficial from educational perspective
partly _because_ it is explicit and disturbing. It shows exactly what it is we
as society want to uproot.

~~~
zozbot234
> prevent those guys from becoming predators.

You think this hasn't been tried? These guys are not like you or me, they are
severely lacking in empathy. They feel no aversion whatsoever to engaging in
predatory behavior on fellow humans, including kids, as a matter of basic
temperament. You can prevent them from becoming predators only by providing
clear consequences for such behavior, and an appealing alternative for them to
choose instead. (The latter is why smart people don't tend to become predators
of this sort - they have other ambitions, whatever those might be.)

------
notcreative123
Sorry to hijack the thread: I read all the dialogs there but did not feel
disturbed or upset or anything, really. Should I be worried? Should I check
doctor? Or will it come naturally later when (if) I have my own kids?

~~~
mmmrk
Why do you want to worry?

~~~
michaelt
If all of Bob's friends were disgusted by a video of a kitten being killed and
thought the killer was a monster, but Bob was indifferent to the video, Bob
might wonder if he was somehow more like the killer than any of his friends,
and perhaps worry about that instead.

------
megous
This is what Facebook (or other social media) "connecting people" also means
in practice. You get children connected to whoever wants to chat with them
online.

The Facebook will even helpfully provide you with the closest children around
you, and help you infiltrate large groups of children, just by sending a few
invites around, and being lucky to hit a few that will accept your invitation
mindlessly. Then you'll get much easier way into their social circle, and
easier time getting accepted by others in the social graph.

------
pyuser583
An article by a private security company says the world is unsafe.

------
INTPenis
My past gf used to hitchhike with grown men when she was 14. My current gf
used to party with sailors she found in the harbour when she was 16.

We used to laugh this off and reference the Cyndi Lauper song.

Both turned out to be professional and independent women btw.

Is all this monitoring really going to help? Or is it just going to freak
parents out?

I'd rather see them go after predators actively than help AI monitor children.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/SVUFw](http://archive.is/SVUFw)

~~~
generalpass
I learned from their twitter to use `archive.md` instead of all of the other
TLDs.

------
floppiplopp
Honestly, this article is a disgusting sales pitch for AI snake oil, using
child abuse as a marketing ploy. Everything triggers my bullshit detectors.
Even the comments below the article read all the same, like this is some
amateur PR stunt. A ML system that can dectect nuances in social interaction?
Sure, that'll work... not! Just pay some private company money to monitor
everything a child or teenager communicates, that potentially saves sensitive
information and that might be breached one day? Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
Listen, I know online grooming is a problem that might be as prevalent as
abuse in the immediate family, and I'd like to prevent this as much as anyone.
But some cyber-bullshit company writing tear jerking marketing articles and
its own comments below on the back of abuse victims isn't going to help.

------
awinter-py
On the face of it this isn't a section 230 issue because nobody _published_
anything illegal (CDA doesn't apply to private chats). But actually it is -- I
suspect there's a COPPA violation in here. The platform could be a defendant
in these actions if not for the exemption.

SESTA doesn't help here because of 'knowingly'.

I buy the argument that 'without section 230, ISPs wouldn't exist.' I hate my
ISPs specifically but in general I think internet access is a social good.

 _But_ I don't feel the same way about instagram, or even the AOLs and
compuserves that existed when this law passed. Rewrite this so that it
protects ISPs but not social platforms. 'Without this exemption, FB has to
charge its users so they can afford moderation' is a fine compromise for me.

~~~
chmod775
> But I don't feel the same way about instagram, or even the AOLs and
> compuserves that existed when this law passed. Rewrite this so that it
> protects ISPs but not social platforms. 'Without this exemption, FB has to
> charge its users so they can afford moderation' is a fine compromise for me.

You want some faceless moderator at Facebook/Google to read all your private
messages and look at all your stuff? I don't think you've thought this
through.

~~~
awinter-py
This isn't about DMs. CDA / 230 doesn't apply to DMs. It's about the
hypothetically COPPA-violating public account created by an under-13 minor.
The original photo in the sting wasn't a DM, I assume it was posted publicly.

It's about liability for public posts.

------
boh
Shame should be a key element in combating this behavior. The guy from this
article shouldn't have his username or profile pic pixelated, we should be
able to see exactly who this is.

~~~
saagarjha
How does this help other than give you a vague feeling of satisfaction? How do
we even know that the person is using their own picture?

------
newnewpdro
I wonder how many of these predators are getting off as much on the virtual
corruption of some negligent parent's innocent offspring as they are a sexual
attraction children.

~~~
zozbot234
If the perps are sociopathic/psychopathic/etc. we can definitely expect that
to be a major factor. Sociopaths look for weak, vulnerable people that they
can easily manipulate and exert some sort of power on, and kids fit that
description quite closely. "Sexual attraction" in its everyday sense would be
quite secondary.

------
rambojazz
I would have gladly read the article if it hadn't asked me to sign in with
facebook or google. Sadly, I'll pass.

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elyobo
Wow, that was hard to read (so much so that I couldn't read much of it, had to
skim). Horrific.

------
usebunsby
howdy do that

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SimeVidas
Does the author know that the article is behind Medium’s paywall?

[https://outline.com/BNreFw](https://outline.com/BNreFw)

~~~
TheBeardKing
That's only the first section of the article.

Edit: Can someone paste the whole article? As a parent of 9 and 7 year old
girls, I'd like to know what platforms to be weary of. There's no way we'll be
letting them have public social media accounts for a very long time.

~~~
kaikai
They only talk about Instagram in the article. It’s an ad for the service they
run, so there’s not much info besides “this horrible thing happens regularly,
we’re working on it.”

------
Angeo34
If you let children under the age of 15 on the internet unsupervised it's your
own fault and the parents should be punished heavily.

15 is the median age of consent in the entire developed world (the US is as
developed as Nigeria in sociological view). Problem solved.

------
unixsheikh
I'm perhaps going to hit a soft spot here, but parents need to take serious
responsibility for their children.

Home school the children!

Take control of the Internet (firewall and DNS) and don't allow access to
social media or a smart phone until appropriate age.

Teach the children about these problematic issues so they actually understands
why they can't have free access to a smart phone, and what's really bad about
the Internet. Make them understand these issues!

Make contact to other people who do the same and let the children's social
contacts be with like minded people in real life.

We, and several other families, have done that, and are still doing it, with
great success.

~~~
saagarjha
I’m not sure isolating your children from the world is necessarily the only
response, or even an appropriate one.

~~~
unixsheikh
It has nothing to do with isolation from the world, it's protection. The
children still have lots of friends.

------
droithomme
Holy crap, that was much worse than I expected seeing the title.

Ok, so suddenly I want to say we should have no internet social media for
kids. Also, internet drivers license so we can trace all these men and go
arrest them and put them on a list.

A teen boy in my family had some adult man in another state sending him
presents and inviting him to come visit. The mother thought it was not a
problem. The father was pretty sure it was bad. I eventually convinced both of
them they needed to shut this down and make sure the boy understood he was
being groomed. So I know this happens. But it wasn't anything near as bad as
the article describes what happens to girls.

