Facebook Flooded With 'Sextortion' and Revenge Porn, Files Reveal (theguardian.com) 54
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook had to assess nearly 54,000 potential cases of revenge pornography and "sextortion" on the site in a single month, according to a leaked document. Figures shared with staff reveal that in January Facebook had to disable more than 14,000 accounts related to these types of sexual abuse -- and 33 of the cases reviewed involved children. The company relies on users to report most abusive content, meaning the real scale of the problem could be much greater. But the Guardian has been told that moderators find Facebook's policies on sexual content the hardest to follow. "Sexual policy is the one where moderators make most mistakes," said a source. "It is very complex." Facebook admitted this was a high priority area and that it was using "image-matching" software to stop explicit content getting on to the site. It also acknowledged it was difficult to draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable sexual content.
Shocker (Score:2)
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. Sorta like Slashdot with the intelligence factor decreased by an order of magnitude. Sadly, Facebook does not have the moderation and meta moderation that has made Slashdot a paragon of civility and reason.
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Re:Shocker (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator
Oh? Ever try browsing at -1? I'm quite sure Slashdot has plenty lowest common denominator types...
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Ever try browsing at -1? I'm quite sure Slashdot has plenty lowest common denominator types...
I always do; It's the most entertaining part. Also there are great posts at level zero. Compared to facebook Slashdot [even -1] is an Ivory Tower of philosophers.
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Sorta like Slashdot with the intelligence factor decreased by an order of magnitude.
Conservation of Ninjutsu? [tvtropes.org]
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Dammit! Don't you know it's quite rude to link to TV Tropes during normal business hours? I have work that will never get done now.
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Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it really a shock that the human race is full of a bunch of morally corrupt douche bags?
Actually, this is evidence for the opposite: That people are generally good.
There are over a billion people on Facebook, and only 54,000 sextortioners. That is only 0.0054% or about one out of every 19,000 users.
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Re:Shocker (Score:4, Insightful)
Such individuals make up only a small portion of the population. It's just that social media greatly magnifies their impact.
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Such individuals make up only a small portion of the population. It's just that social media greatly magnifies their impact.
Exactly. Social media is like a force amplifier for assholes and fucktards. And the worse they are the more coverage and attention they get. Is it any wonder it tends to bring out the worst people in the worst ways?
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Thought we were talking about Facebook not 4chan.
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Whats the difference?
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I find this hard to believe (Score:2)
Sextortion was tried on me (Score:5, Interesting)
My first response was "So, you're going to blackmail me with pictures of me doing shit that everyone's already seen me doing in the past? Get a life you fucking broke-bitch virgin. Release them, I'll make more money than you will."
Doesn't work very well when your intended 'victim' already had a bit of a career in porn, and also freely showed themselves the moment they were legal, 16 years ago.
If people were more like me, this kind of problem wouldn't exist.
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If only Geocities hadn't closed down and wiped my page. Though I'm sure there are a few stalkers out there (see half the AC comments replying to me) that have a copy.
Um, actually, (Score:4, Insightful)
"Facebook Flooded With 'Sextortion' and Revenge Porn, Files Reveal"
"Facebook had to assess nearly 54,000 potential cases of revenge pornography and "sextortion" on the site in a single month"
Um, this site [zephoria.com] claims there were almost 5 billion pieces of content posted in march 2017. .0001% of all items? Wow, a flood?
"in January Facebook had to disable more than 14,000 accounts related to these types of sexual abuse"
This site [zephoria.com] (again) claims there were 1.94 billion active accounts in March 2017... Hard'y a huge fraction they disabled. .00072%?
"and 33 of the cases reviewed involved children."
This, however, is truly despicable. And virtually immeasurable. Sad to think they must have missed a lot more.
Privacy rules make enforcement difficult (Score:2)
"involved children" - define "child" (Score:2)
33 of the cases reviewed involved children
This could be a stupid teen sextoring an ex-girlfreind, a stupid 13 year old being childish and posting nudes of his sister, or a real sexual predator using Facebook to exploit preschoolers.
On the "badness scale," that last one is much, much worse than the other two.
These shouldn't be all lumped together just cecause they all involve minors.
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Why is a teen committing sextortion less serious than an adult committing sextortion?
It's not: A teen a month shy of his 18th birthday committing sextortion against someone his own age is about the same as if he had waited two months to do the same thing.
However, morally, it is much different than if he did it 5 years earlier in life and somewhat different than if he did it 5 years later in life.
I'll spare you comparing the maturity and presumed legal culpability of 13-year-old vs. an 18-year-old, I assume those are obvious.
As for an almost-18-year-old vs. a 23-year old: Many jurisdictions
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Or you could bypass this whole shitstorm-in-a-teacup by not having a Facebook account.
It's worked for me. I'm not bothered by endless pictures of people's breakfast burritos and their streams of mindless bragging about how awesome their new $_gadget is.
But to each their own, if someone likes Facebook, more power to them.
"Flooded?" FB has 1.94 billion active users (Score:2)
So that's 1,940,000,000 written out. The article mentions 14,000 of those were problematic and had to be shut down. That's 0.0007% of accounts.
Assuming 20 drops per mL, there are 90921 drops of water in a gallon of water. So one drop of water in a gallon is 0.02%. To even push it to the same order of magnitude would need 100 gallons of water. Would anyone consider one drop in 100 gallons of water "flooding"?
Not to say that I approve of revenge porn or extortion, but the amount of incidents reported in the a
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But this is homeopathic posting - the rarer it is the more potent :-)
Puritan sex rules (Score:2, Insightful)
"Sexual policy is the one where moderators make most mistakes," said a source. "It is very complex."
Yes, this is because they are all rediculous and ultimately at their very root, based on socio-political norms that are constantly changing and never in agreement.
The biggest example of course being, "does a bare female breast constitute porn?"
What's the difference between a male breast and a female breast? The female one produces milk for infants. What's the societal difference? Female breasts are sexual. By this logic, an infant getting milk is a sexual act, and a man's wife biting his nipple during sex,
Thank you (Score:2)
Whoever it was that told me "Don't get a Facebook account", thank you. That was more than 10 years ago and your advice is still sound.
Oh, wait....that was me who said, "Don't get a Facebook account". Thank you, me!
Tagging (Score:2)
I wish people would forget about censorship, and just insist on tagging.
So if I'm offended by the naked breast, then all I need to do is filter on the 'naked breast' tag.
I'm pretty jaded about most of the stuff that I see on the internet, but even I'm reaching for the brain bleach when I come across surprise necro-bestiality. And that's not just beating off a dead horse there.
Just tag that shit so that people who don't want to see it don't see it (and conversely, those who do want to, can.)