U.S.A. Mark Zuckerberg getting sued for putting children at risk online

[MrDawn]

Mark Zuckerberg is getting sued for putting children at risk for sex trafficking, pedophiles, cyber bullying, self harm and a whole bunch of other things with his platforms. What are your thoughts?

The families of people harmed by social media proved to be an immense force in Wednesday's hearing.
Through applause, laughter at CEO testimony, hisses and moments of silence, the parents who say their children suffered or died as a result of social media served as a key foil. They drove tensions higher and in some cases appeared to fuel the attacks of lawmakers against the CEOs.
Congress has held many tech CEO hearings. But more than any other, the presence of so many parents in the room transformed the hearing and injected an unprecedented sense of urgency.

January 31, 2024: CEOs of Meta, X, Discord, TikTok and Snap testify before Senate Judiciary Committee

Congress today is grilling the chief executives of several big tech companies, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, about potential harms from their products on teens.

www.cnn.com

 

[Mark]

Mark Zuckerberg is getting sued for putting children at risk for sex trafficking, pedophiles, cyber bullying, self harm and a whole bunch of other things with his platforms. What are your thoughts?

January 31, 2024: CEOs of Meta, X, Discord, TikTok and Snap testify before Senate Judiciary Committee

Congress today is grilling the chief executives of several big tech companies, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, about potential harms from their products on teens.

www.cnn.com

I watched some of this earlier when it was live. Surprisingly, the guy representing Snapchat disgusted me more than Zuckerburg this time around. There’s no way in hell that anyone working for that company, even the janitor, is unaware of the primary use of that platform. I will not go as far to say that it was designed with the express purpose of trafficking and child pornography, but it was certainly created with the intent of sharing explicit photos allegedly without recourse and facilitating affairs. Let’s be real here… if you’re single, you don’t give a shit about whether or not you have a straggler of a risqué text message or ten in your inbox. You only concern yourself with that shit self-destructing if you’re too irresponsible to cover your tracks while you’re up to no good.

 

[Advocate for Ants! Mouth]

I haven't gotten a chance to watch yet but will at some point soon, but...

Surprisingly, the guy representing Snapchat disgusted me more than Zuckerburg this time around

I'm not sure why you would be surprised by this. Zuckerberg is a lizard pretending to be human, whereas Snapchat was invented by creepy ass humans.

 

[Mark]

I'm not sure why you would be surprised by this. Zuckerberg is a lizard pretending to be human, whereas Snapchat was invented by creepy ass humans.

To be honest, I never really saw anything about the dude from Snapchat before yesterday. I’m aware of the investigations and stuff prior, and already have a grudge against Zuck just for ruining social media with his bullshit. The fact that he’s a lizard person really doesn’t bother me nearly as much as just how sneaky the dude from Snapchat tries to present things… almost as if he planned his whole speech using disappearing text to cover his trail.

 

[Kat]

Mmm this is a tough issue. Tech companies do need to reduce the harm caused by social media, but holding them responsible for the actions of individuals on their site is a dangerous path to go down. I'm personally more worried about how they push content that upsets people to keep them engaged and how they collect and sell user data.

It's a parent's responsibility to educate their kids on the risks of doing illegal drugs provided by people they don't know. If I DMed somebody and sold them drugs that killed them, should Crystal be responsible? I would say no. Ideally Meta wouldn't even be able to read DMs, much less police them.

I assume it was through DMs because most advertisers would pull their ads over open illegal activity.

There’s no way in hell that anyone working for that company, even the janitor, is unaware of the primary use of that platform. I will not go as far to say that it was designed with the express purpose of trafficking and child pornography, but it was certainly created with the intent of sharing explicit photos allegedly without recourse and facilitating affairs. Let’s be real here… if you’re single, you don’t give a shit about whether or not you have a straggler of a risqué text message or ten in your inbox. You only concern yourself with that shit self-destructing if you’re too irresponsible to cover your tracks while you’re up to no good.

Maybe that's why it was created, but being able to share things without it sticking around forever is appealing for plenty of benign reasons. Maybe you want to send pictures to a partner without worrying about them being shared. Maybe you're worried about a security breach on your or their service. Maybe you want to take and send a picture without feeling self conscious about it (it's harder to spot all the flaws if you can only look at it for a few seconds). Maybe you don't want a partner to have a record of that stuff when you split, because some people become vengeful.

Everything staying on the Internet forever is awful in a lot of ways. It was refreshing to have a platform where everything was temporary. Too bad they ruined it with so many ads and whatnot.

 

[Mark]

Maybe that's why it was created, but being able to share things without it sticking around forever is appealing for plenty of benign reasons. Maybe you want to send pictures to a partner without worrying about them being shared. Maybe you're worried about a security breach on your or their service. Maybe you want to take and send a picture without feeling self conscious about it (it's harder to spot all the flaws if you can only look at it for a few seconds). Maybe you don't want a partner to have a record of that stuff when you split, because some people become vengeful.

Everything staying on the Internet forever is awful in a lot of ways. It was refreshing to have a platform where everything was temporary. Too bad they ruined it with so many ads and whatnot.

That’s the thing… that app came to be at a time where you could press two buttons simultaneously on most phones and take a screenshot of whatever was on the screen at the time, and that did fuck all for someone with a second device with a camera. It took them quite a while to get a handle on that, and by then, the best they could offer was a “So and so screenshot this message” warning after the fact, but after it’s already sent and screenshot, what good does that do? Then, there was the geolocation data. Holy. Shit. Did I reap the benefits of fuckwits sharing their real-time and historic data back when I was doing repo. All I had to do was get that individual to accept whatever decoy account I was using, and I was golden. It wasn’t until months after it came out that that data was being exploited for nefarious purposes that they began to implement security permissions allowing certain groups, individuals, or no one permission to your location data. There’s a convenience to those kind of apps, but no real benefit. Hell… it was a lot harder to have your nudes leak if they were on Polaroids, a physical media.

 

[Kat]

That's all fair, it certainly wasn't 100% secure. I never used it to send anything I absolutely wouldn't want to get into the wild. It was good enough for the purposes I listed, though. Yeah, somebody could take a screenshot, but it would expose them as a dick who took a screenshot of a picture you obviously didn't want them to.

I don't remember it having access to location info, but I haven't used it in ages.

 

[Mark]

That's all fair, it certainly wasn't 100% secure. I never used it to send anything I absolutely wouldn't want to get into the wild. It was good enough for the purposes I listed, though. Yeah, somebody could take a screenshot, but it would expose them as a dick who took a screenshot of a picture you obviously didn't want them to.

I don't remember it having access to location info, but I haven't used it in ages.

I’m not sure what it looks like now, because I don’t touch those kinds of apps these days, but it used to be a Google Maps/Maps plugin that just showed you where your friends actively were and where they had been.