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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

#21

Post by mxkopy »

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.

A war on crime can always be used as a scapegoat for other things, but promoting a culture of resilience through acceptance is a weird thing to hijack IMO.

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

#22

Post by throwaway421967 »

gnicholas wrote: post #17
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.

I have wondered if generative AI will make this less of an issue. Victims won't be as afraid of images leaking out if they can plausibly claim that they're fakes.

Yeah, if fakes are already out there. What value does the real thing have?

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

#23

Post by ngai_aku »

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #6
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.

[flagged]

You think only kids in the West are susceptible to shame?

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

#24

Post by bandyaboot »

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.

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

#25

Post by nullstyle »

ctoth wrote: post #13
blueyes wrote: post #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.

I can't believe you are actively suggesting this. Even in this horrific case. Okay, so you train your classifier on extortion. Then you train it to detect sexual content. Then you train it to detect potential piracy. Then you train it to detect wrongthink. Then you don't have a free society anymore.

Social media is not required to have a free society. I don't think the progression you predict is how things would play out. IMO, At some point, people will simply talk in person (well, off-network) to be sociable.

Casual piracy, e.g. link sharing in DMs, would be a tipping point if I had to guess.

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

#26

Post by BowBun »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #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.

I tend to agree. If you're going to allow people to anonymize their identities with your tools, and further use your tools to facilitate mass crime that results in damages or loss of life, you need to be accountable for that!

I think the only way out of this is a full ID verification system online, which worries me a lot for a bunch of reasons. Not sure how you de-anonymize for safety without invading privacy (the eternal tradeoff).

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

#27

Post by ok_dad »

ctoth wrote: post #13
blueyes wrote: post #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.

I can't believe you are actively suggesting this. Even in this horrific case. Okay, so you train your classifier on extortion. Then you train it to detect sexual content. Then you train it to detect potential piracy. Then you train it to detect wrongthink. Then you don't have a free society anymore.

We don't have a free society when predators can easily prey on victims like this with no repercussions. That's not freedom for the victims, that's just another form of prison. I personally don't know what the answer is, but it isn't "do nothing to protect freedom".

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

#28

Post by kenjackson »

ctoth wrote: post #13
blueyes wrote: post #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.

I can't believe you are actively suggesting this. Even in this horrific case. Okay, so you train your classifier on extortion. Then you train it to detect sexual content. Then you train it to detect potential piracy. Then you train it to detect wrongthink. Then you don't have a free society anymore.

Don't we already do this with email spam? And movie/TV ratings? You could slippery slope any classifier for any purpose into this -- this is why hopefully we have brains to determine good and less good uses of technology.

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

#29

Post by giantg2 »

gnicholas wrote: post #17
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.

I have wondered if generative AI will make this less of an issue. Victims won't be as afraid of images leaking out if they can plausibly claim that they're fakes.

Yep, this is already happening, although the victims seem to still be pissed.

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

#30

Post by kenjackson »

BowBun wrote: post #26
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #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.

I tend to agree. If you're going to allow people to anonymize their identities with your tools, and further use your tools to facilitate mass crime that results in damages or loss of life, you need to be accountable for that! I think the only way out of this is a full ID verification system online, which worries me a lot for a bunch of reasons. Not sure how you de-anonymize for safety without invading privacy (the et…

You could set up a system that supports both. If you want to be verified then you opt-in and then you get a special green check by your name. And also provide a bunch of tools to allow you to filter based on the green check -- e.g., I don't allow DMs from non-green checks or don't show me any content in my feed that isn't from a green check account. So you have the option to decide how much you want to be in the anonymous versus verified world.
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