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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

#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.

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

#3
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.

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.

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

#4
I think the bad guy extortionist should be held accountable but if Instagram cannot identify them then Instagram should be held accountable. These platforms need more traceability.

If Instagram were liable for anon bad actors illegal behavior then Instagram would clean up their act with a quickness. There is no incentive to fix anything on these platforms with the current rules.

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

#5
> After his death, the scammers sent Guffey a laughing face emoji and a message using a pseudo account on Instagram after the original one was shut down. “It said, ‘did I tell you your son begged for his life?’” Guffey says. They also demanded money in exchange for the photos.

I wish there was a special prison for these types of people. Jesus Christ.

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

#6
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.

[flagged]

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

#7
It's would be trivially easy to scan these streams of messages through some kind of ML classifier and identify cases of extortion before they result in suicide. Once the platforms identify the perps, they can block them from the platform. I hope this lawsuit makes the costs of platform inaction so high that they build out detection systems.

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

#8
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 really does come down to our society having a sick relationship with sex, our bodies and interpersonal relationships in general. I think we are really going to go through some growing pains in the near future when it comes to our 18th century morality in this 21st century world.

Hopefully we can move past restrictive religious ways of looking at the world and actually prevent things like what happened in the article.

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

#9
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.

Maybe or maybe not. Don’t blame the victims please.

I’m not from a puritan environment at all but when I was a teenager I had low self esteem. I believe I could have been an easy victim back then.

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