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How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

theguardian.com

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Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#71

Post by Zak »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #64
welshwelsh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this is Meta's problem though. Requiring platforms to monitor user activity is unreasonable. The main issue here is one of education. By 12 years old, a person should have learned enough about sexual exploitation in school that if a stranger asks them for nude photos, they would call the police.

> Requiring platforms to monitor user activity is unreasonable That is absurd. Facebook spends billions algorithmically sorting their post, and they could spend a tiny fraction filtering them, just like they already do when required by law.

Facebook and Instagram do a significant amount of automated filtering. People from scammers to spammers to pimps have incentives to try to bypass the filtering. It's a cat and mouse game Meta has a significant incentive to stay ahead in; everyone from advertisers to app store owners to users will punish them for having too much of any of that, or even legal adult content.

Policing is the job of the police. If criminals are advertising sex with children on Instagram to the point that child molesters can find it, police can find it too. They can then use the low-tech method of posing as buyers, witnessing illegal acts, and arresting the offenders.

Instagram should provide assistance when legally required and technically possible of course, but should not be expected to perform law enforcement functions. That's not just because it would be some sort of undue burden on the huge corporation operating it, but because it lacks the checks and balances we apply to police agencies.

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#72

Post by giantg2 »

scarface74 wrote: post #47
kypro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite easy to restrict access to kid's devices. We use Google family and the kids all hate us because they have to ask our permission whenever they want to install anything. We also get to see activity reports and we talk to them often about bad people online and why they need to be careful. I understand you can't monitor a child 24/7, but you can be careful with what devices children have access to and what the…

Do your kids have friends? I can guarantee you that they are using their friends devices.

I look at that kind of like, do you eat junk/fast food all the time at home, or just occasionally when you go out? It's going to do a lot more harm if it's constant vs a few cheat meals here or there. Same concept for limiting device time and privileges.

Also, it can help to know what restrictions the friends have and talk to their parents. At least in my day this was done to make sure there weren't any obvious physical dangers. Or has getting to know the parents of your kid's friends gone out of fashion?

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#73

Post by LinuxBender »

hermannj314 wrote: post #32
postdb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crimes are committed all the time using phones and yet, we do not allow phone companies to monitor, record and report the content of pur phone conversations. And they can't just add a line in a terms of service, they have no legal right to do it. (Ignore the issue of Metadata, I mean the audio portions of our calls) Are you sure about that? It is my understanding all telco traffic are monitored. Some countries may h…

Correct, I cant speak for all the world. In the United States, only a party to a phone conversation may record that call. Some states have stronger requirements than that, requiring all parties to consent. The phone company can't listen to your phone calls and there is definitely no public expectation or journalists demanding that AT&T and others do something about preventing crimes that used a phone by recording all…

The phone company can't listen to your phone calls

Perhaps not explicitly legal but calls are monitored all the time after switch upgrades. We even applied US specific patches that disable the operator override tone that lets you know someone is on the call. I had to do this after every switch upgrade. One time that specific patch flubbed in a non obvious way and when I jumped onto a random call the people said, "Is someone there? Who is on our call?" and I disconnected.

For what it's worth, my boss had an arrangement with the three letter agencies to give them unfettered access to all the switches and we would even enable non-logging test mode to prevent any of their commands from being logged. My boss and most of his direct reports were not US citizens and one of them openly hated Americans so they did not really care. This was a couple decades ago so maybe by now everybody follows the spirit of the law.

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#74

Post by DoItToMe81 »

Facebook is a "marketplace" for all sorts of crimes by virtue of having three billion users. Which is about 37% of the world's population. The fact that some horrible crimes slip through the cracks, as is inherent to every large population, is no excuse to treat that 37% as criminals.

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#75

Post by scarface74 »

giantg2 wrote: post #72
scarface74 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do your kids have friends? I can guarantee you that they are using their friends devices.

I look at that kind of like, do you eat junk/fast food all the time at home, or just occasionally when you go out? It's going to do a lot more harm if it's constant vs a few cheat meals here or there. Same concept for limiting device time and privileges. Also, it can help to know what restrictions the friends have and talk to their parents. At least in my day this was done to make sure there weren't any obvious physi…

Can you really talk to all of the parents of all of the kids your child goes to school with and spend time with?

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#76

Post by throwaway59601 »

scarface74 wrote: post #44
throwaway59601 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happens when parents restrict kids instead of teaching them about the dangers.

Yes, just like the “Just Say No” campaign completely stopped children from using drugs and parents telling children to “save themselves until marriage” stop children from having sex.

That confirms my point - I'm saying that restriction, blocking access or making it a tabu never works, it does the exact opposite (and worse, because it builds a sense of urgency to have/experience the thing).

Instead of forbidding it, you have to teach the children about the actual dangers of doing the thing and how to do it safely, how to limit the damage and what are the limits they shouldn't cross - and the reasons for these limits.

Telling them "just say no" or "you have to wait until marriage" only makes them even more curious, and in many cases they will absolutely overdo it once they finally are out of the reach of their parents.

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#77

Post by tony_cannistra »

Nextgrid wrote: post #50
tony_cannistra wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. It is obvious to me that any bad PR is orders of magnitude worse for the business than the potential benefit of having even hundreds of thousands of criminals "engaging" on the platform.

If bad PR was a problem surely you can start by actually actioning reports on obvious cybercrime pages instead of saying that they "reviewed my reports but that none of the groups were found to have violated its standards". I stand by my argument. That disgusting company doesn't care about crime and malicious activity because it's cheaper to let it happen and simply clean up the few PR incidents with some lies which…

Look, it's clear you don't like Meta. Frankly neither do I. But the reality is that the article at the URL that you linked in your original comments contains evidence that supports my point that PR is all that matters.

Namely: "KrebsOnSecurity later found that reporting the abusive Facebook groups to a quarter-million followers on Twitter was the fastest way to get them disabled."

Frankly it does seem that you don't appear to have read or understood the information presented in the link you posted.

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#78

Post by giantg2 »

scarface74 wrote: post #75
giantg2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look at that kind of like, do you eat junk/fast food all the time at home, or just occasionally when you go out? It's going to do a lot more harm if it's constant vs a few cheat meals here or there. Same concept for limiting device time and privileges. Also, it can help to know what restrictions the friends have and talk to their parents. At least in my day this was done to make sure there weren't any obvious physi…

Can you really talk to all of the parents of all of the kids your child goes to school with and spend time with?

Ostensibly locations like school and other organized activities have some level of direct supervision. Private situations like being at another's home is more where this come into play. That's more likely to be where a kid has access and opportunities for things like alcohol, drugs, weapons, misuse of the internet etc.

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#79

Post by throwaway59601 »

mc32 wrote: post #43
throwaway59601 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're bringing up drugs here. We're talking about webpages, not substances directly altering your neurochemistry. But yeah, indeed - usually it's a fault of parenting. Instead of properly teaching about the dangers and responsibility (in case of weed/alcohol, or finance) they made it a tabu.

Point is, grown adults who "know better" fall into these traps too. It's not only about inculcation or knowing better. If it's there, despite all you know, sometimes you fall for it. That's the point.

That adults know better is a myth. They don't. It's not about knowing better, it's about being taught to be reasonable with the thing, and that takes long exposure to that thing, ideally with the support of a parent.

Re: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

#80

Post by mc32 »

throwaway59601 wrote: post #79
mc32 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is, grown adults who "know better" fall into these traps too. It's not only about inculcation or knowing better. If it's there, despite all you know, sometimes you fall for it. That's the point.

That adults know better is a myth. They don't. It's not about knowing better, it's about being taught to be reasonable with the thing, and that takes long exposure to that thing, ideally with the support of a parent.

You don't get it. People trained, educated, fall for scams all the time. People in pen testing who know they will get hit also fall. There is a case for a moat or external protection.
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