Facebook Asks Users: Should We Allow Men To Ask Children For Sexual Images? (theguardian.com)

Alex Hern, writing for The Guardian: Facebook has admitted it was a "mistake" to ask users whether paedophiles requesting sexual pictures from children should be allowed on its website. On Sunday, the social network ran a survey for some users asking how they thought the company should handle grooming behaviour. "There are a wide range of topics and behaviours that appear on Facebook," one question began. "In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook's policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures." The options available to respondents ranged from "this content should not be allowed on Facebook, and no one should be able to see it" to "this content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it." A second question asked who should decide the rules around whether or not the adult man should be allowed to ask for such pictures on Facebook. Options available included "Facebook users decide the rules by voting and tell Facebook" and "Facebook decides the rules on its own."

Comments

How did this happen?

[H3lldr0p]

Seriously. How? How did anyone at any level of the company think this was a good idea for long enough that it made it out into public view?

Talk about being asleep at the wheel. How many in management are now going to claim ignorance when confronted with this?

Re:How did this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump family could probably buy your family's entire lifetime income going back several generations. Who really is the fuckup 'cause it's not them. Jealous much?

Re: How did this happen?

[Dread_ed]

Law enforcement wanted to make sure that the community of "Asian immigrants" was not negatively viewed by the public.

As a result they knowingly buried the investigations, stopped prosecution and arrests, and let these "Asian immigrants" continue to groom, abuse, drug, kidnap, sexually traffic, gang rape, and kill underage British children.

This is not what Progressive means, but it is exactly what Progressive thought does. It prioritizes the wrong things for the right reasons. Like when it tries to cure cultural divides by enforced racism. Or when it tries to punish male sexual predators by casting all men as the problem. Or when it tries to enforce diversity through explicit discrimination.

In this case your brain is overwhelmed by the injustice of innocent children being raped. This sets off alarms that you cannot silence, even through the conveniently provided self-justifying lies of "privilege" and "rape culture." When it is white people, or men, or even better, just white and Asian men, you have been provided with a narrative that anesthetizes your injustice meter. Fortunately there isn't one for raping kids, at least not on this side of the Atlantic.

Glad to know you still know to draw the line somewhere. Those law enforcement officers in England were steeped in progressive thought with regard to "Asian immigrants" and they really lost their way.

But it is ok for women.

[lucaiaco]

The implicature is that if an adult woman asks for an explicit picture of a boy or a girl it is OK.

Re:It's a trap!

[dbialac]

And it's sexist. There are plenty of female pedophiles.

Re:It's a trap!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not flamebait! Just look at all the Female Teacher Sleeps With Student articles that are out there.... And it isn't just women sleeping with highschool boys; there have been incidents where women have been sleeping with highschool girls as well.

A *bullshit* question

[udachny]

So the actual question is this: should FB be actively monitoring all conversations and make value decisions, redact / sensor content and information, actively pass information collected in conversations to authorities, isn't that the actual question?

See, it is obviously a loaded question: should FB allow men to ask children for naked photos (pretty much that's the question, yes?) It is a loaded question, it's a bullshit question, that's because the answer is predetermined: no, FB shouldn't be allowing men to ask children for naked photos. (How about women, by the way?)

BUT the reality is that this question makes no sense. FB is not providing men with a short list of predetermined questions that they can then send to children, where one of those questions reads: 'send me your naked photo'.

That's not what is happening. For FB to not allow men to ask this type of a question from a child a number of things will have to be done:
1. Maybe FB should not allow children to register.

2. Maybe FB should not allow children to add / request to be added as 'friends' with adults.

3. Maybe FB should be monitoring all conversations between men and children and then using various cues (as determined by some form of AI I suppose) to record conversations and then to pass information to a human/to authorities.

4. Maybe FB should be monitoring all conversations at all times, record them and use AI to sensor/redact information and pass data to authorities.

Zukerberger and his FB(I) want to do 4, they want to control your thoughts, conversations, search for 'undesirable' behaviour and report it to authorities.

Instead of asking the question they want to ask (4) they ask you this bullshit question about preventing child porn from being distributed.

Re:No Facebook

[TheRaven64]

In this case, it actually is. If someone posts something in a public place saying 'hey, any underage girls / boys want to send me naked pictures?' then it's pretty easy to take down the post. But presumably pedophiles are not doing that, they're sending direct messages. Is it therefore acceptable for Facebook to inspect every direct message (i.e. no end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp anymore) and block anything illegal? Should they just disable end-to-end encryption for under-18s and block illegal content? Can they even legally do that, without running afoul of various minor-protection laws in different jurisdictions? Should they then warn you that you're talking to an under-18 (and would this help pedophiles identify targets)?

Re:Huh?

[gnick]

What's not legal in the US may be perfectly allowed, and even considered normal, in other parts of the world.

I have no problem with enforcing US pedophilia standards on all FB users regardless of the laws where they're located. Just because it may be legal doesn't mean FB has to allow it.

Re:It's a trap!

[sexconker]

Yes really.

Re:It's a trap!

[dcw3]

I can't seem to find stats on the percentage of female pedophiles. But I'd argue that the number is likely under reported because the boys don't care/complain.

As for the age, I'd agree that 17 isn't it, but then what age is? I don't think we're discussing statutory rape cases here, but the ages vary from state to state in the US in regards to how old you need to be to legally consent.