Markass
Not the worst
User ID: 3843
Markass
Not the worst
9mo ago
Relabeling it won't work, they will attack "Open Ideas" just as easily.
Markass
Not the worst
9mo ago
That post reads to me like it's talking about people who feed off attention. If you don't care about maximizing attention then you mitigate the risk of Flanderizing yourself. My online persona is not so different from my real-life persona which is not so different from who I've always been. I don't have a Twitter account so that helps.
Markass
Not the worst
9mo ago
Looking at https://jobs.now/, these companies deliberately post job listings in low-circulation newspapers to be able to claim that there are no American workers. I think you're right on the money.
Markass
Not the worst
9mo ago
Maybe I'm heavily biased, but as the user of a website that has faced numerous deplatforming attempts for several years over completely legal speech, I find it hard to genuinely care if people get censored for saying the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk. In reaction to his death, some may say "and the world kept turning", and in reaction to people who are targeted for saying things like that, I say "first time?"
Is this hypocritical? Maybe. But my position is that going after people for completely legal speech has been a thing for a LONG time now. I'm not saying it's a good thing that people are having their lives ruined for making comments about CK, but I am saying that people have been raising the alarm bells over free speech for YEARS and yet basically nothing has been done about it. So I'm not surprised to see this happen and the only thing I have to say is: What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do to ensure that America is a place where anybody can speak their mind freely? Because this is very, very far from being the first time something like this has happened.
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
Why would anyone let their kids just hop onto these websites without doing basic due diligence or educating them on the reality of predators?
See downthread. There is a pervasive culture of letting your kids have unrestricted Internet access, it's hard to change, and anybody going against it will be seen as overly paranoid.
If a platform provides robust parental controls then they've done enough, full stop. The baton of responsibility is passed.
They should also ban pedophiles when they are reported and proactively look for them too.
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
What is the alternative to an opt in system?
Banning pedophiles from the platform as soon as they are reported, and proactively looking for them too.
How about parents take responsibility for their kids instead of imposing restrictions on all the rest of us because of their laziness.
Easier said than done. There is a pervasive culture of letting your kids have unrestricted Internet access, and I have a feeling that any parent who goes against this norm and, for example, stringently monitors their access or even prohibits them from using the Internet entirely (because arguably, kids shouldn't even be on the Internet at all) is going to get looks from other people, or at least their kid will say "Billy gets to use the Internet, why can't I?" Unless everybody in a community agrees that the Internet is too dangerous for kids to be used unsupervised, reasons like "but predators are online" sound a lot like "I don't let my kid outside after 3 o'clock because a stranger might come and snatch her."
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
So then would you agree that Roblox has said or implied "vigilantes" are just as bad as predators?
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
Why else would they entertain weird nonsense from a stranger unless they're getting something out of it?
It's not just currency. They can want the approval of adults, the satisfaction of curiosity, or simply somebody to talk to. Many groomed kids have a tumultuous home life and are extremely lonely, for example. My point being that it shouldn't be thought of in pure economic terms, so predators doing this to children is (or should be) unacceptable and predator catchers finding predators this way is (or should be) acceptable.
If this was the immovable force you assert it is we wouldn't have this problem, since in that case children would always listen to authority figures that tell them not to do this.
Again, it's oversimplified to think this way. Being impressionable goes both ways. Sure, some will listen to authority figures and not do this. But some will not, for many reasons such as a preconceived distrust of authorities, being curious thinking "what could go wrong", or simply not knowing of the dangers.
And this is unique to online gaming... how, exactly?
It's not. But Roblox is uniquely refusing to ban predators when people report them.
The mitigations around it can't be solved for through technological means alone.
Yes, but you can just ban predators who are reported to do this. You can at the very least also not ban people who find predators and get them arrested in real life.
While it may be true that Roblox should ban people more frequently, that wouldn't actually fix their PR problem
It's not just "ban people more frequently", it's not banning people who find predators too. I feel like the latter is the biggest cause of their recent PR problem. Their tendency to not ban predators has been reported and documented before but it hasn't caused a huge media circus. Going after people who find predators is just a huge WTF moment.
I do agree that it's impossible to rid platforms of pedophiles before they strike but I'm willing to bet a lot of money that if Roblox suddenly reversed course, unbanned Schlep and started banning reported pedophiles, that their PR problem would virtually disappear overnight.
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
Sure, you could go full Club Penguin and make the service as useless for actual communication as you can
You don't need to do this. You just need to ban pedophiles when people report them. Which Roblox seems to be refusing to do.
they foul up any actual investigation
This doesn't make sense to say when Schlep (the banned "vigilante") has gotten multiple pedophiles arrested in real life.
intentionally antagonize existing users
I'm not aware of any instances of this happening.
"Wow, how horrible, people are willing to give you free Vbucks if you send them nudes"
To my knowledge, none of the investigations involved the bait sending nudes of a child to a predator for currency. I would assume you were just throwing this out as an example but then you spend a lot of words elaborating on exchanging nudes for Vbucks. In any case, it is extremely oversimplified to think that children are being sexually exploited only because they're being paid to do so.
your power is gone as soon as the victim reaches for that "off" switch (unless other conditions are met)
That "unless other conditions are met" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. In most cases it's not as simple as blocking the predator precisely because of conditions like: the fact that minors are easily impressionable and manipulated into doing what predators want them to, the perpetrator has gotten their nudes and is threatening to send them to family and friends unless they do what they want. The 764 sextortion cases show that these conditions hold quite frequently.
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
Roblox has posted two separate responses to the vigilante bannings and none of them come close to saying they're just as bad as the predator.
The second says:
Similar to actual predators, they often impersonated minors, actively approached other users, then tried to lead them to other platforms to have sexually explicit conversations (which is against our Terms of Use).
I don't know how else to read this besides "'vigilantes' are similar to predators". It sounds like a defense attorney arguing that the cop who impersonated a drug buyer is just as bad as an actual drug buyer, on the sole basis of their actions being superficially similar.
It makes sense that people breaking the terms of service should be banned regardless of what their intention was behind it
Unless it updated recently to ban "vigilantes", this is quite a novel interpretation of the terms of service.
if they let this go on, knowing about it, doesn't that open them up to liability in the same way that NBC was potentially going to be held liable for the guy who killed himself on To Catch a Predator before they settled?
Liability for what? The "vigilante" they banned, Schlep, didn't do anything remotely near what NBC did to Bill Conradt. Schlep was just somebody who collected evidence and reported pedophiles to law enforcement.
Arguably, Roblox has just as much liability if not more for the pedophiles they do know about but never ban. Schlep and other so-called "vigilantes" have consistently reported them to Roblox, but they refuse to act in most cases, even if the pedophile has been arrested, and only rarely actually bans them if there is a highly publicized video made about them. Remember that Louisiana's lawsuit isn't the only one Roblox is facing as a result of their refusal to ban pedophiles.
Recently, when I saw this first come up on reddit there was a comment that talked about how robust the child safety controls are for Roblox, now.
Consider the fact that there is an arbitrary limit of 100 games that parents can block for their child before they can't block any more games. This isn't sufficient to prevent their child from being exposed to sex games because there are way more than 100 sex games on the platform and Roblox seemingly does nothing to ban them.
But there's probably (potentially) going to also be a similar problem for any kid that goes on the internet without any supervision or guidance at all.
If the platform they visit actually bans pedophiles when they are reported, there will be much less of a predator problem compared to Roblox.
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
I am... skeptical, let's say... that the people "working for free to rid their platforms of predators" should be allowed to do that, because I suspect there are many, many more vigilantes (and aspiring vigilantes) out there doing real and serious harm, than actual child-snatching pedos.
The "vigilante" that Roblox recently banned is Schlep, and I take issue with him being described as a vigilante. It implies that he is imposing justice on the pedophiles himself, when he is not. All he is doing is collecting evidence and reporting them to law enforcement, as he should. He also reports them to Roblox, but Roblox has consistently refused to ban the predators from their platform, even after they've been arrested, until he makes widely publicized videos about them.
No, your quote says that the parents didn't know that they existed and that's why they didn't use them. And this matches my experience after reading through hundreds if not thousands of publicly available cases of minors being groomed on Discord. The majority of minors don't have parental controls enabled. I don't have any hard figures but my gut feeling is that roughly 0.01% of minors on Discord have an account that is actually under parental controls, if at all.
I think the main problem with them is that it's a completely opt-in system and the minor has to intentionally share a QR code with the parent in order to be connected. So even if we assume they voluntarily link the accounts or are forced by their parents to do it, at any time they can just create another account that is outside the purview of the parents, and they would be none the wiser.
Discord parental controls look to me to be something that Discord can point to and say "hey, we're safe for children!" rather than actually being safe for children.
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
So Roblox is getting a lot of press lately, and it's been very negative. They're ostensibly a place for kids, but it's been known for years that pedophiles and child predators are on their platform, they keep grooming and raping minors, and barely anything is done about them if ever. Lately they banned Chris Hansen 'To Catch A Predator' style stings, banned and sent a C&D to someone who has gotten multiple pedophiles arrested using those stings, and defended their ban by *checks notes* saying "vigilantes" are just as bad as predators. As a result, they're being sued by the Louisiana attorney general, and even Chris Hansen is getting involved (by making a documentary).
It's too early to tell what the outcome of all this will be, but some people are concerned about potential government overreach, especially with recent pushes for mandatory online ID verification (and we all know people doxing themselves like that never goes wrong) and other laws passed in the name of children's online safety (like the UK's Online Safety Act, which proved to be too burdensome for a hamster forum to continue operating). Especially because Roblox isn't the only platform with a predator problem that isn't getting better.
I think that ID verification is bad, but pedophiles are also bad. My take (if slightly conspiratorial) is that people in positions of power are deliberately letting the pedophile problem grow out of control so they can justify implementing draconian ID verification measures. The public sees this false dichotomy between letting pedophiles run rampant and ID verification, and chooses ID verification as the lesser of two evils, when that's far from the case. Roblox (and Discord) had people working for free to rid their platforms of predators, and all they had to do was let them be. Yet they deliberately went out of their way to ban anybody who got pedophiles arrested, meanwhile doing little to the pedophiles themselves. It's a huge WTF moment and makes you wonder what the end goal is.
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
The trans streamer incident was in 2022, one year after Null's article in 2021. I believe the 2021 article comes after a video game emulator developer named Byuu killed himself in June of that year. His death was weaponized by Hector Martin and blamed on the farms, despite ample evidence to the contrary, which resulted in Dreamhost dropping the site in 2021. Later in 2022, Byuu's death was one of the things referenced during Keffals' #DropKiwifarms to successfully pressure Cloudflare into dropping them too.
I have been a regular at kiwifarms, unfortunately, God, I have wasted my life.
I've written 10 threads there and I find the site is useful in knowing what NOT to do if you ever find yourself in trouble.
Markass
Not the worst
10mo ago
It doesn't seem like there is such a thread on the Kiwi Farms. I think the topic is sufficiently old (from the 00s apparently) that nobody has explored it yet.
Markass
Not the worst
11mo ago
But one of the main killers was from an Australian defamation suit.
Actually the Australian defamation suit had little to no impact at all. The main outcome was time and money lost by the defendant, who was somebody with almost no relation to the forum at all.
Payment networks have historically been the biggest problem to the Kiwi Farms..
(And despite that, they're still around anyway).
Only because Null is stubborn and refuses to give up. A lesser man would have shuttered the site long ago.
The law is trying to change culture, when culture must change before the law does. I think porn is too normalized in today's culture, owing to sexual liberation and the toaster fucker problem. Trying to ban it won't work when people still want porn. The problem is that it's acceptable to talk about jerking off to porn as if it's something that should be encouraged rather than getting it on with a real person.
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