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

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

#111

Post by jevoten »

glorygut123 wrote: post #69

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

To add to the sibling comments, Japan has very restrictive gun laws [1], but a suicide rate (12.2) similar to the US (14.5) [2]. Let me add that I find the instinct to restrict personal freedom as the very first measure very disturbing. As if the loss of freedom is not a harm in itself. More pragmatically, how many people will admit to being suicidal, if the immediate consequence is being locked in a padded room without so much as a shoelace?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

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

#112

Post by toader »

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.

Either you are a far outlier with confidence abounds, or you don't remember what life as a teenager is like for most.

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

#113

Post by Syonyk »

theossuary wrote: post #54
Syonyk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely internal opinion based on observed external actions: > Of course not. They're on the platform using it, viewing ads, aren't they? > I mean, it's a shame that some people die, because they won't be able to view ads, and the negative press might impact other people's opinion of the platform leading to potentially reduced ad view, but, heeeeeyyyyyy it's easy enough to prevent certain platform-hostile opinions fro…

It's so strange to me that HN has this view of social media, but not other things, like fast food. Fast food uses deceptive advertising and purposefully tries to get kids addicted to their product; which slowly kills them over time. But I remember HN being against sugar taxes, and other laws to help prevent it. But for some reason social media is different? I don't see why it would be. Are the people on HN pushing fo…

I'm not a great fan of fast food, though it didn't seem relevant to bring up in this topic...

However, I actually do draw a distinction between "things you have to go seek out," and "things that come to you in your home/pocket/etc."

I don't particularly care for gambling, and I'm the sort that goes to Vegas for conferences and doesn't even gamble a penny. But I honestly don't have a huge problem with Vegas existing. I recognize some people enjoy gambling, and... fine, whatever.

I do have a very serious problem with "casino apps" on phones/tablets/etc, and the "loot box" mechanics of games that bring that sort of thing into your pocket - without any of the regulation of Vegas. There are some quite strict limits on "how much you can screw over your customers," and casinos have to abide by them. There are no such limits on slot machine apps, and while you can go to Vegas and come away richer (it wouldn't work if nobody did), there's literally no way to achieve that with app-based gambling machines. You 100% lose all your money.

But to assert that nobody cares about fast food in a thread about social media is still... weird.

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

#114

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

arp242 wrote: post #101
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not confident that 100% of these instances are "some guy in russia". Is it true that these scammers in question were? Or that LEO tracked them down at all ? Or did anything meaningful? I agree that we ask LEOs to enforce the law, and doing so is a lot of work. There is, though, quite a large discrepancy between what we ask them to do, and what they do, so it remains to be seen if they are doing a lot of work, an…

It's not 100%, no, that's why I used "a lot" and not "all". And even if they are in the US, it's not that hard to be reasonable untrackable with minimal skills. People make mistakes, and maybe every now and then you might catch one person. Whoop-die-doo. It's just not effective or reasonable to track down every single case in depth.

I agree that the job isn't easy, but that doesn't mean it should be ignored. You speak of tracking down "every single case" as if they get close to that metric, but do they? How many do they actually track down? Is it greater than even 1%?

I just don't think they're doing the best they could be doing, is all, but that goes back to my suggestion about them being receptive to civilian oversight and control: we can run the numbers and determine objectively whether they're doing as good as we'd like them to be doing.

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

#115

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

whatshisface wrote: post #43
MeImCounting wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does someone make extortion impossible? What does that look like?

We could all agree that you get forgiven for anything publicized by a blackmailer.

"oh no, someone blackmailed me with these selfie videos of me swiping some watches, guess I'll just keep them then" ;)

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

#116

Post by arp242 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #114
arp242 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not 100%, no, that's why I used "a lot" and not "all". And even if they are in the US, it's not that hard to be reasonable untrackable with minimal skills. People make mistakes, and maybe every now and then you might catch one person. Whoop-die-doo. It's just not effective or reasonable to track down every single case in depth.

I agree that the job isn't easy, but that doesn't mean it should be ignored. You speak of tracking down "every single case" as if they get close to that metric, but do they? How many do they actually track down? Is it greater than even 1%? I just don't think they're doing the best they could be doing, is all, but that goes back to my suggestion about them being receptive to civilian oversight and control: we can run…

Even if you can catch half of the 1% that you track down (hugely optimistic!), what's the point? The impact is barely perceptible, these types of changes to get caught does nothing to deter anything. And now criminals will be more careful so it will be even harder to track them down (and/or everything will shift to areas outside the US). Any wins will be temporary at best. All of this would be a colossal waste of time and effort.

The best thing that can be done is changing the system so these types of scams/extortions are much harder to pull off in the first place.

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

#117

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

arp242 wrote: post #116
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the job isn't easy, but that doesn't mean it should be ignored. You speak of tracking down "every single case" as if they get close to that metric, but do they? How many do they actually track down? Is it greater than even 1%? I just don't think they're doing the best they could be doing, is all, but that goes back to my suggestion about them being receptive to civilian oversight and control: we can run…

Even if you can catch half of the 1% that you track down ( hugely optimistic!), what's the point? The impact is barely perceptible, these types of changes to get caught does nothing to deter anything. And now criminals will be more careful so it will be even harder to track them down (and/or everything will shift to areas outside the US). Any wins will be temporary at best. All of this would be a colossal waste of ti…

Any such system changes can be gamed, it's inevitable, what's the point? Rather than adding more and more layers of technology that will be bypassed anyways, we should step back and ask: what exactly is the problem here?

The problem is that we've already made it illegal, but I don't see law enforcement doing as much enforcing as I'd like them to be doing. I didn't give them permission to throw their hands in the air and cross their arms in frustration and give up yet, and I don't think that any marginal effort would be wasted.

I don't think they're at their capacity either, so from my perspective, the difference is between 0 benefit and >0 benefit for the same annual expenditure on salary. If they needed more capacity after actually exhausting their existing capacity, they could reduce work in things we don't want them to work on.

They could convince folks otherwise, but it would require what I mentioned before: being receptive to non-LEO oversight and control. Then, we would have more accurate information for our judgement of whether they're doing as much as we'd like them to be doing, and what we'd like them to be doing.

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

#118

Post by apapapa »

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…

Section 230 is great... The other alternative would be if the government would host everything

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

#119

Post by lamontcg »

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.

> if they have no actual hand in it.

But they have an actual hand in it.

Discord is subletting rooms out to moderators and doesn't really have any hand in the content on any particular discord. Meta, however, is pushing their algorithm on everyone on the platform and their employees, in one way or another, handle what content is seen and what content is policed and taken down.

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

#120

Post by BadHumans »

lamontcg wrote: post #119
elevatedastalt wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

> if they have no actual hand in it. But they have an actual hand in it. Discord is subletting rooms out to moderators and doesn't really have any hand in the content on any particular discord. Meta, however, is pushing their algorithm on everyone on the platform and their employees, in one way or another, handle what content is seen and what content is policed and taken down.

You misinterpreted their comment. They are talking about not agreeing with the actual laws around responsibility if something happens on the physical land you own.
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