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Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

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Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#81
post #25
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can really compare staying up late to sneakily watch a (typically soft-core) porn and things like that to always having this content being pushed on you with a device always in your pocket every day. It's really a matter of degree and scale.

I guess but I had unfiltered access to the internet starting around this age and it was fine. There were two stages of my life, too young to understand or have any desire for sexual content, and old enough to want and seek out sexual content. At 13 I was well into the second stage and it's super weird how we pretend that tweens and teens aren't horny as hell despite all of us having lived through the hormonal onslaug…

That’s pretty much exactly my experience and my opinion as well -

I knew what I wanted, I figured out how to get it, I never had a moment’s hesitance at the time, and I’ve never had a moment’s regret now as an adult. I sought out sexual material when I became interested in it, the same way I sought out sex when I became interested in it. I can’t even imagine what the adults in my life could have possibly done to stop me.

Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#82
post #59

I am disappointed that parents allow 13 year olds to have iphones + social media accounts. The downsides have been well-documented. [1] Can we all collectively get together and say "no" to that stuff until like 18? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI6rX96oYnY

I have kids who will soon be teens. They don't have phones yet, but I can see the decision looming: my ability to communicate / coordinate with them plus the fact that a huge portion of their social life will migrate online on one hand vs. all of the dangers on the other. This is why a lot of parents start with smart watches or restricted phones. They try to get the communication / coordination benefits without the o…

I put off letting my kids have a phone until 14. They had tablets before that. If I could have done it all over again, they wouldn't have gotten any kind of device until at least 16. At best they would have gotten a flip phone.

Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#83
post #10

I am always surprised by articles like this. Instagram never recommends sexual videos to me .

It’s very easy to train it. 1. Search “TikTok dance” 2. Scroll until one is at the beach thus bikini 3. Let it loop a couple times 4. Exit the app and comeback - that’s your new feed

As a former rock climber and sailor I appreciate knots. I sometimes watch videos on youtube about knot theory and rope handling practices. One subset of this is "braiding" of rope, which is an important rope-handling technique. But I watch one video about braiding hair and for MONTHS youtube is pushed me nothing but makeup tutorials and teenager fashion junk.

Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#84
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying that TikTok US shares zero code to TikTok China? I never suggested that data is going back to China but my engineering mind jumps immediately to the backends sharing code albeit deployed from two different companies and regions. China is famous for its fast and efficient censorship in social media and assume this ability would transfer to the US.

Regardless of what code is shared, the reality is that TikTok US is less censored than other platforms.

Which has nothing to do with the point of my thread. Don’t back pedal on your point.

Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#85
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess but I had unfiltered access to the internet starting around this age and it was fine. There were two stages of my life, too young to understand or have any desire for sexual content, and old enough to want and seek out sexual content. At 13 I was well into the second stage and it's super weird how we pretend that tweens and teens aren't horny as hell despite all of us having lived through the hormonal onslaug…

Meanwhile I encountered the wrong, extreme side of porn at 15. And it spiraled from there. It really caused me issues in my twenties and its only now in my thirties that I finally feel I can start to bury the ashes. I'm on track, I've eliminated what I was obsessed with and still fighting the last of the demons. I'm not who I was and it's been an insane hard task to change myself. I understand why people don't. That'…

I mean… no offense man but it sounds like your problem wasn’t porn, your problem was you.

Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#86
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it a risk?? Are the communists cackling with glee as they steal all those 30 second clips of teens doing the cinnamon challenge?

It is probably possible to manipulate people to further your political goals in an automated fashion using these technologies. In fact you can manipulate insane numbers of people in all kinds of ways with them.

This runs into a simple logical problem. The powers that be would love nothing more than to be able to do exactly what you're describing. And they have effectively endless resources at their disposal alongside dysfunctional intelligence agencies, a completely dysfunctional and obsequious media, and social media sites that have no doubt all signed up for PRISM and its likely even more insidious successors. Yet society is absolutely, in no way whatsoever, becoming more compliant.

Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#87
post #9

> In one clip that Instagram recommended to a test account identified as 13 years old, an adult performer promised to send a picture of her “chest bags” via direct message to anyone who commented on her video. Another flashed her genitalia at the camera. When it comes encryption and privacy the legislators just can't wait to jump in an "save the children", let's see how vigorous they are going to be investigating and…

The reason for the US government banning TikTok is not that TikTok is a worse product (it is superior). The reason is that it is a massive geopolitical risk. People often conflate these two.

Correct.

The attacker in the 2015 OPM hack acquired biometric data on every federal government employee. Cross referencing against biometrics collected at ports-of-entry unmasked covert US operations, undermined US interested and put the lives of Americans abroad at risk. This information is valuable to every adversary equipped to use it.

The scandal of Tiktok is that rather than breaching OPM, a foreign entity has simply requested this information directly from future federal employees. Beyond mere facial biometrics, tiktok knows the childhood street address of ~every future spy -- and everyone near and dear to them. Tiktok can generate a psychological profile on ~every future diplomat and international businessman. And the biometrics they can access includes things like sleeping habits, gait, vocal chord structure, vocabulary, and accent -- much more than the OPM hackers got.

Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#88
post #59

I am disappointed that parents allow 13 year olds to have iphones + social media accounts. The downsides have been well-documented. [1] Can we all collectively get together and say "no" to that stuff until like 18? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI6rX96oYnY

I have kids who will soon be teens. They don't have phones yet, but I can see the decision looming: my ability to communicate / coordinate with them plus the fact that a huge portion of their social life will migrate online on one hand vs. all of the dangers on the other. This is why a lot of parents start with smart watches or restricted phones. They try to get the communication / coordination benefits without the o…

"I'm not sure how I'll navigate it."

I am not going to address the broad set of questions here but I want to point out that two items exist:

1) No-data SIM cards ... they call and text only ...

2) imessage only access point - fairly trivial to set up.

So ... a child can be given a phone - even a smartphone - and it can't be used as a social media device when the family wifi turns off. Further, you can heavily restrict family wifi without curtailing normal phone talking if you have an imessage/facetime only access point.

Again, no magic bullets here but some tools that you might find useful.

Re: Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile I encountered the wrong, extreme side of porn at 15. And it spiraled from there. It really caused me issues in my twenties and its only now in my thirties that I finally feel I can start to bury the ashes. I'm on track, I've eliminated what I was obsessed with and still fighting the last of the demons. I'm not who I was and it's been an insane hard task to change myself. I understand why people don't. That'…

I mean… no offense man but it sounds like your problem wasn’t porn, your problem was you .

Debatable.

The problem did originate from porn. I didn't know what was right and what was wrong, I was naive. And unfiltered internet access, I was a rogue. I could talk all day about warez, CC gens, botnets. I'm just luckily I've had a solid family environment. The internet was my social outlet then.

My maturity age was a lot lower than to how old I was. And because the internet was not a commodity in 2000 and really the wild west, what could folk do? I was just a cowboy who took all the wrong paths. Kept taking the left rather than right and hid it well. No one knew the dangers of the internet back then, nor knew how to navigate the dark side. As well not having the maturity required.

Prior to this, I was kicked out an school subject for "hacking" and discovering a Windows 98 DCOM exploit. I wasn't allowed to touch any computer apart from one. It may of been that I also got pissed off with another student and sabotaged his coursework under the school's news paper account. A true uprising of an menace.

I bought a BB gun at school, started showing it off till someone reported me. I had no intention to do anything with it. This is in Europe, I just thought it was cool. Already having the rep of "hacker boy" some older year student reported me, I got in trouble and then someone randomly pulled me aside handed me a CD-R copy of Quake 3 Arena.

It kept me occupied but sadly never saved my soul as after college went to university, had my own dorm room, when I got my own place I was too hooked to porn and in other area's. The twenties was all mistakes but, made through it just.

And here I am now mid-thirties, job, mortgage and someone who even surprises myself. Still working stuff out, most at work don't understand me. I have near to zero friends, but regardless, myself is making great progress.

I was dealt the wrong set of cards and took all the wrong paths. And I've flipped them, both physically and mentally.

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