
Skout Facing Sex-Predator Crisis - jordhy
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/06/14/skout-grasps-for-answers-after-sex-predator-crisis/
======
kogir
Having operated a service similar in some ways to Skout, banning underage
users is not the answer if you actually want to help them[1]. These same users
will now sign up again but say they're 18+.

It's much better to encourage people to be honest and use that information to
try and make the service safer, either through special features and app
behavior or through user education. Nothing is perfect though, and no matter
what you do some people will make bad decisions in spite of your best efforts
to help them.

[1] If you're just covering your ass though, it's perfect. "The user lied!
It's not our fault!"

~~~
jknupp
I think you're a bit confused. The issue is not teens posing as adults, but
sexual predators posing as teens. Appeals to the sense of honesty of
perpetrators of sex crimes are likely misguided.

~~~
dangrossman
He's not confused at all. He's saying that by forcing teens to pose as adults
to continue using the app, they can no longer help educate teens about how to
avoid predators, nor offer them specific features to help them, because they
won't know who they are. It's not the sex predators those features are for, it
doesn't matter that they'd ignore them.

~~~
jknupp
Perhaps in theory, but realistically this makes no sense. This is not a
pornography site, where there is some taboo prize for lying about one's age.
It's a social network, only as useful as the number of connections a user has
on it. What is the likelyhood that a teen, and enough of their friends, will
sign up again under a false name and somehow work out a system for determining
the false names of all their friends? The benefit to the staggering minority
of teens that would have been receptive to a sexual predator awareness message
from an _iPhone app not at all sexual in nature_ is far outweighed by the
overt protection of all teens using the service. How popular do you think it
will likely be amongst pedophilies without potential victims?

~~~
kogir
I'm pretty sure Skout is for meeting new people. So they'll just sign up with
the same names and a different email, and start fresh. In fact, we had to
start blocking problem users by unique device ID. Nothing else would deter
them.

Pedophiles will target them using largely the same methods as before: mainly
scrolling through pictures. Sure, search won't help as much, but it's hardly a
deterrent.

------
wtvanhest
There has to be a better strategy. When I was a teen I would put the wrong age
in sites so I could see content that I otherwise wouldn't be able to. That is
what teens will do now. The CEO needs to come up with alternatives or they
have not solved the problem. And may lead to accidental statutory rapes which
would obviously not be good either.

~~~
politician
Perhaps, but shutting down teen access shifts potential liability from the
company to the lying children.

~~~
cynest
There's another possible point here: preventing people from signing up as
teens ups the difficulty for targeting teens.

------
mistercow
This is rather perplexing. I mean, first of all, this isn't really Skout's
problem. Yes, there is a problem with sexual predators using the internet to
find victims, but banning teens from Skout doesn't actually do anything to
prevent that.

Secondly, if this is how they were going to react in this scenario, what the
hell was Skout thinking letting minors sign up in the first place? Were they
just hopelessly naïve?

------
proee
This reminds me of a fictional story on HN a few months back. The author
presented a case where he wakes up and his app goes viral. Investors flood his
voicemail and he's suddenly making millions. However, something tragic happens
with his app and all the investor pull their support.

Does anyone else remember this story and have the link?

~~~
Darnoe
Yes, the fictional app was called sore goggles

here is the HN link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3699912>

~~~
proee
That's it! Thanks.

------
egillie
I'm really impressed with the response from Skout on this. "I would take 100%
revenue hit to keep our users safe if I had to.” Here's hoping they find a
good solution.

------
maked00
Every time I see some tool use the word "community" when referring to any
online forum, chat room, etc. it makes me gag. It is just so inherently wrong.

You could just as easily refer to any lynch mob as a community.

------
danso
This blog post, dated May 2012, rants about a purported Skout ad that came up
while playing Words With Friends

[http://joeymarsilio.blogspot.com/2012/05/flirting-with-
disas...](http://joeymarsilio.blogspot.com/2012/05/flirting-with-
disaster.html)

Assuming that it's real (I read comments from other sites complaining about an
ad described as depicted), it's easy to see why critics felt the service was
too forward in pandering to sexualitied teens.

------
Mz
I will mention it again since it is still being discussed:

I wrote something out of concern for this issue and posted it here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4109759>

------
Daniel_Newby
The annual rate of sex crime victimization for people age 12-17 is 1/1500.
Skout had about 2M users in that demographic, so we would expect about 1300
Skout kids per year to be attacked, or 3.6 per day, in the normal course of
events. It sounds like Skout is increasing the rate by one victim per week,
which is a risk increase of a few percent. That's actually pretty damn good
for a service that connects kids to anonymous strangers.

Furthermore, the kind of kid who meets anonymous Internet strangers without
proper precautions is likely to have a much higher than background rate of
victimization due to their behavior. So it is likely that many of the Skout
victims have simply converted their attack from offline to online.

Skout appears to be conducting a witch hunt against themselves. Whoops.

~~~
jknupp
This reasoning is flawed. No one said that there weren't teenagers who were
the victim of a sex crime and also happened to be Skout users. Rather, the
issue is that the platform was being used by sexual predators as a tool to
facilitate initial contact with teenagers they otherwise wouldn't have had
access to.

Additionally, it's likely that an overwhelming proportion of those represented
in the statistic you cited were victimized by someone they knew rather than a
stranger over the internet. For a fair comparison, those victims would need to
be excluded. Not to mention the question of what portion of those 2 million
users are active enough on Skout to even represent a realistic target.
Multiple cases being reported (in the US alone) within a span of days is
unlikely enough to warrant drastic action.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
The point is that the Internet allows us to search for freakishly unlikely
events. The only valid way to decide whether those events are acceptable is by
comparing them to events we have already decided ARE acceptable. We have
decided that it's acceptable for a few dozen American adolescents to be raped
each week. Increasing that rate by at most a few percent is not a cause for
panic, nor a reason to put them all under communications house arrest.

"... otherwise wouldn't have had access to."

If they are spending their energy on Internet meetings, it is certain that
they will have less energy to spend on in-person acquaintenances. There is
probably a very strong substitution going on. The teenager who is open to the
molester next door is certainly even more open to the exciting mysterious
molester from the next town.

