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A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

cnn.com

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Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#121

Post by cybrox »

idontpost wrote: post #46
cybrox wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see where this is coming from but making platforms fully liable for user content will make it impossible to start a business that includes (semi-) public user interaction at all. Only FAANG-size companies will be able to afford the legal fees attached to that idea.

> I see where this is coming from but making platforms fully liable for user content will make it impossible to start a business that includes (semi-) public user interaction at all So? What value have these platforms provided that justifies their existence?

You tell me, you just posted on one of them.

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#122

Post by s_dev »

whitakerch wrote: post #85

When things like this happen I always think that the more important problem is the fact that he chose suicide. This sort of thing cannot be gotten rid of entirely. It's impossible. They can always be lured into another messaging system that doesn't track or analyze data at all. I know this would be extremely embarrassing but it is far from life destroying (or at least it should be). Within a year life would've moved…

He didn't choose suicide. He was mercilessly bullied and suicide was his escape hatch. The party that bullied him are culpable for his death.

Choosing suicide is if you have a terminal illness and have a lethal injection administered.

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#123

Post by DoItToMe81 »

If Instagram can be held liable for not having the magic powers to preemptively police several hundred million people, would it not make more sense to put the man in jail for severe neglect for not giving his son the "Don't send yourself to strangers" talk?

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#124

Post by DoItToMe81 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #50
cybrox wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see where this is coming from but making platforms fully liable for user content will make it impossible to start a business that includes (semi-) public user interaction at all. Only FAANG-size companies will be able to afford the legal fees attached to that idea.

I don't think this is true at all. I think that in an alternate reality where Section 230 never happened then standards would have been created by the industry to tackle the problem. I'm not sure they should be fully liable but being fully immune is ridiculous. I don't know what the answer is but the current incentives are not working.

There wouldn't have been an industry to begin with. Nothing would have been able to scale, legally, and hobbyist communities would have been annihilated due to bad actors abusing holes in moderation. As will happen if 230 is whittled down, and as is happening in countries where equivalents have been removed.

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#125

Post by theGnuMe »

busterarm wrote: post #73
andy99 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been some high profile cases of people standing up to similar scams, including Bezos. It (standing up to bullies - edit: extortionists is a better characterization than bully) is commendable behvaior and needs to be better publicized as such, hopefully it will make some people feel more comfortable doing the same.

Standing up to bullies is the kind of thing that gets young people expelled from school. Something about those zero tolerance policies. We're teaching our kids to be helpless. The only option we give them is to appeal to authority and it absolutely fucks them over when they're involved in a situation because of their own choices.

>Standing up to bullies is the kind of thing that gets young people expelled from school.

I think this is false. You can stand up to a bully without physical fighting or retaliation.

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#126

Post by theGnuMe »

watt wrote: post #19
giantg2 wrote: post #2

Maybe if we weren't so puritanical, this would be less of an issue. So you have a picture of my junk? Ok... nobody wants it and it isn't worth anything. Should I be embarrassed that I have something 50% of other humans have? It'd be interesting to see the differences int his sort of crime in more open cultures.

It does not necessarily need to be picture of anyone's junk. It does not need even to be a picture. So let's focus on the real issue here. Puritanism or whatever, extortion needs to be impossible.

I mean one good thing about Trump is that he's reduced the likelihood that future politicians will get "cancelled" for extra-material affairs or probably even high crimes...

Also Taylor Swift will probably save us all if she takes on AI nudes and she can help teens by leading by example. That will help to change the dialog shame and stigma.

We also need to help kids with self-acceptance and reduce shame. But yes, instagram and social media need to do more, that has been clear for awhile.

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#127

Post by theGnuMe »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #105
glorygut123 wrote: post #69

Surely the real problem here, to my non-American eyes, is having easy access to a firearm, no?

I've always found this reasoning insane. People are in a position where they want, or feel it's the only option, to kill themselves. And someone suggests the problem is access to the ability to do so, rather than what lead them to feel that way? Guns, drugs, knifes, rope, exhaust, whatever. These always become the focus when a kid kills themselves. How about the circumstances that led to it? Suicide is still a proble…

Guns are more lethal and result in more successful suicide when an attempt is made.

So yes access to guns is a problem.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/guns-...

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#128

Post by lupire »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #89
BadHumans wrote: post #86

“If I have a party on my property, and I invite everybody on there, I’m responsible for what happens on my property,” Guffey told CNN. “And for some reason, we treat these digital companies different. These companies hide behind section 230 and say they’re not responsible.” There is a middle ground. If you are just a platform or software, then I don't think you should be liable. I don't think Discourse should be liab…

“If I have a party on my property, and I invite everybody on there, I’m responsible for what happens on my property,” I have no specific comment on the actual situation here, but I feel this expectation is also ridiculous, so the analogy doesn't work for me. People shouldn't be responsible for anything that happens on their plot of land if they have no actual hand in it.

In reality, it's complicated. You have some legal responsibility for what happens on your property.

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#129

Post by bandyaboot »

vdaea wrote: post #76
bandyaboot wrote: post #24

A lot of this is about parent/child relationships and making sure our kids won’t feel such a degree of shame about something like this happening that they’d resort to taking their own life, but also unless these companies have some skin in the game, they have no motivation to help combat these types of things from happening.

And what exactly are they supposed to do? Monitor all private communications? At that scale you would need an AI. Once the AI sees something possibly bad, either you have a real person check it (people would complain about privacy, the mental health of those employees having to see awful things) or you have the AI ban (people would complain about lost accounts) No matter what instagram does they lose. So I think doin…

Well since I don’t have visibility into the inner workings of these companies, I can’t say what exactly they can/should do, but I also don’t accept the premise that the only thing they could do is monitor all private communications. I don’t think it’s impossible that there might be some objective heuristic that could help flag potentially abusive accounts and then put some roadblocks in place to protect minors from those accounts.

Re: A South Carolina lawmaker is suing Instagram after his son died by suicide

#130

Post by lupire »

echelon wrote: post #92
BadHumans wrote: post #86

“If I have a party on my property, and I invite everybody on there, I’m responsible for what happens on my property,” Guffey told CNN. “And for some reason, we treat these digital companies different. These companies hide behind section 230 and say they’re not responsible.” There is a middle ground. If you are just a platform or software, then I don't think you should be liable. I don't think Discourse should be liab…

> The family began piecing together Gavin’s last moments and discovered he had encountered a scammer on Instagram and unwittingly became a victim of sexual extortion, a crime the FBI warns is increasingly targeting underage boys and leading to an alarming increase in suicides nationwide. Meta shouldn't be liable for this. The sexual exploitation scammers should be. Meta and other platforms of a certain MAU threshold…

Your federal felonies don't affect Russian, Indian, Chinese, Nigerian, or lesser populated countries resident making cyber attack operations against the USA.

Extortion is already a felony. This is a national security threat, not a mere crime.

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