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Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

bloomberg.com

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Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#171

Post by marcus_holmes »

ta1243 wrote: post #108
marcus_holmes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to make this kind of racket more common, and also provide some kind of defence if it goes wrong: "they're fakes" will be more believable. But it takes some serious mental resilience to contemplate that as a teenager when someone is threatening to send your nudes to the people you love. Not many kids are going to have that kind of intestinal fortitude. The tendency of porn to give men severe anxiety abou…

> kids are more embarrassed/ashamed about their bodies because all the other penises they've seen are so huge. And this is the problem. In years past kids would be naked with other kids, when changing after gym for example. Nowadays the only penis a boy sees is his own and that of porn people, because we've made normal nude situations extremely rare, especially outside of the context of sex.

This. The whole "you westerners are weird about your bodies because you didn't get to see your grandma's tits when you were kids" thing. We need to normalise nudity as non-sexual, especially within families.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#172

Post by HaZeust »

jimbob45 wrote: post #35
HaZeust wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we keep thinking that people will wise up to AI-generated content just because it'll eventually be mass-produced and anyone can do it? Anyone can write absolutely anything with little check and balance on substance, and MILLIONS still believe tabloids and headlines. We've been able to reliably edit photos/video/film for 80 years with an exponential increase in its efficiency within the last 30 - and we still h…

Robocalls aren’t effective anymore. Emails don’t do much except once in a great while. Mail hasn’t worked since the 80s. I have to imagine IM clients will lose their effectiveness for scamming the same as all the others.

You are confused. Robocall scams are still a multi-billion dollar market, capping at an estimated $50b in damages in 2023. [1]

1- https://time.com/6513036/robocalls-government-action/

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#173

Post by HaZeust »

rightbyte wrote: post #127
ta1243 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids are more embarrassed/ashamed about their bodies because all the other penises they've seen are so huge. And this is the problem. In years past kids would be naked with other kids, when changing after gym for example. Nowadays the only penis a boy sees is his own and that of porn people, because we've made normal nude situations extremely rare, especially outside of the context of sex.

Don't childen shower together anymore after gym classes?

Nope; but to be fair, I also think it's better without it - especially in a post-smartphone era where everyone has a camera in their pocket. The repercussions are just not worth it.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#174

Post by jmopp »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #65
jmopp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, the false positives (and the fallout from it) might outweigh the negatives: imagine a volunteer doctor who disappears in West Africa due to being kidnapped/robbed etc and someone local tries to contact the family back home, but all the messages end up getting blocked.

This seems like such a contrived example. By all accounts the Dr would probably be in better shape if the kidnappers weren’t able to contact their family.

It's not the kidnappers trying to contact the family in this case. It's the clinic administrator who doesn't know why their doctor hasn't shown up for a week

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#175

Post by marci »

jpsouth wrote: post #169
marci wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been a while, but when I worked in the education sector we had systems for students to upload their work, get graded, feedback, reports etc. Yeah, you could upload .pngs and .jpgs but it's hardly 'the next contact in the list' or 'maybe they had the same first or last name' in those scenarios, you upload the work for specific classes/courses. Obviously that's a single system, I don't know the full scope of wha…

It’s a weird market, I’ve mainly come across Moodle which was easily the most difficult integration I’ve ever worked on. I had the displeasure of using it several times for testing purposes and I had to wonder, how much money did a director get backhanded for buying that piece of crap? I presume it’s a very difficult market to break into though for various reasons, a lot of which tech won’t solve any time soon, to th…

Something run by schools. Did a quick search: https://www.finalsite.com/blog/p/~board/b/post/facebook-grou...

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#176

Post by didntcheck »

anal_reactor wrote: post #68
DoreenMichele wrote: post #51

Some thoughts I've had for years: A. My understanding is an underage teen who takes a nude selfie and sends it can be charged with distributing "child porn." This is a serious problem and should not be true. If other people forward it, they should be charged, but a teenager should not get in legal trouble for making a nude selfie and sending it privately. B. We need to culturally get over a lot of our hangups about c…

Unfortunately, I've noticed that the so-called "public opinion" is only getting more prude, and the denial about teenagers having sex drive is only getting worse. Basically nobody wants to be labelled a pedophile, so nobody wants to touch that problem with a three-meter stick.

I've also noticed this. On more than one occasion I've been left completely bemused by someone insisting that a teenager couldn't possibly have been seeking out sexual content themselves, and must have been groomed into it by an adult. Sorry, have they met a teenager?

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#177

Post by BlueTemplar »

anal_reactor wrote: post #68
DoreenMichele wrote: post #51

Some thoughts I've had for years: A. My understanding is an underage teen who takes a nude selfie and sends it can be charged with distributing "child porn." This is a serious problem and should not be true. If other people forward it, they should be charged, but a teenager should not get in legal trouble for making a nude selfie and sending it privately. B. We need to culturally get over a lot of our hangups about c…

Unfortunately, I've noticed that the so-called "public opinion" is only getting more prude, and the denial about teenagers having sex drive is only getting worse. Basically nobody wants to be labelled a pedophile, so nobody wants to touch that problem with a three-meter stick.

I don't understand this, aren't pedophiles specifically interested by (non-sexually mature) children, rather than (sexually mature-ish) teenagers ?

There seems to be a lot of (new?) confusion between pedophiles and adults being interested in sexually mature teenagers, which, sure, can cause it's own issues, but is neither a sickness nor a one-way street, and that's what the different majorities of consent and authority and being able to interact with adult industries are for.

And the cutoff for turning fully major and being able to still interact with your slightly younger peers has to be dealt with anyway, ideally in a progressive way.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#178

Post by graemep »

bloomingeek wrote: post #151
touisteur wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the people calling sex education "grooming" are the same preventing the legal system to evolve in the way you described. You're very lucky that you could home-school your kids and teach them all this. It's all very alien to me how teaching safe practice of something that has a huge probability of happening can still be seen as encouraging it, "grooming". Education should be a bare minimum here: here's how you…

Since grooming has become politicized, the hypocrisy is monumental and finally exposed. So called puritanism is the wrong direction, because as you pointed out, teens will do stupid things. What about the toxic masculinity culture taught by the right and the church? The right says, "keep these women under control." The church says,"women MUST obey their husbands no matter what." If that's not grooming, I don't know w…

I home educated too, and one of the big advantages is that it creates more opportunities to talk to them about things like this.

> The church says,"women MUST obey their husbands no matter what."

Which church exactly says that? Only a fringe group of American evangelicals. I have never come across even them saying "no matter what" although there are probably a few real lunatics who do.

Here is the view of the the largest Christian church, that submission in marriage is mutual: https://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhor... (page 115)

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#179

Post by graemep »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #177
anal_reactor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I've noticed that the so-called "public opinion" is only getting more prude, and the denial about teenagers having sex drive is only getting worse. Basically nobody wants to be labelled a pedophile, so nobody wants to touch that problem with a three-meter stick.

I don't understand this, aren't pedophiles specifically interested by (non-sexually mature) children, rather than (sexually mature-ish) teenagers ? There seems to be a lot of (new?) confusion between pedophiles and adults being interested in sexually mature teenagers, which, sure, can cause it's own issues, but is neither a sickness nor a one-way street, and that's what the different majorities of consent and authori…

Yes, that is the correct definition.

There are multiple ways of dealing with it. Romeo and Juliet style age of consent laws for example. Not treating teenagers who do something stupid the same way as adults who distribute child porn.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#180

Post by graemep »

wpietri wrote: post #40
throehcifj wrote: post #36

Why is it called "scam" and "fraud"? It is typical revenge porn, sexual abuse and distribution of child pornography. There is a strong network to support rape victims, and it should be used for such cases.

It is called a scam because that's what the perps are going for. Their goal is to extract money. From the article: "The price was $300. He transferred the money via Apple Cash and pleaded to be left alone. But it wasn’t enough. Now Dani wanted $800." Maybe you know different teenagers than me, but I'm not expecting that the boys described here would be big on joining a rape support group.

I would describe that as blackmail. The legal term is different but its a serious crime and should be a police matter. The problem is victims may be scared or ashamed of reporting it to the police. In some places they may be guilty of a crime too.

There should be support. I suspect there are sources of support but a victim of this may not think of looking of this.

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