I live in an area that has been declared among the safest in America. Two months ago a 17 year old girl from our city disappeared. Turns out she had been being groomed for a year over Discord and in Roblox by a 39 year old the next state over. He eventually convinced her to let him pick her up, after which he filmed himself having sex with her, killed her, and then dismembered her body. He apparently was grooming other underaged girls in a similar way as well.
The digital age presents with it novel forms of danger for children, and for adults for that matter, and there is absolutely no way to effectively address these risks without some amount of reduction in privacy. And before someone inevitably says “where were the parents?” and wash their hands of the situation, a healthy society should care for and protect all children, especially those whose parents do not.
It’s one thing to hold the opinion “I am willing to sacrifice some number of lives, in order to preserve privacy”. That is an honest and potentially justifiable opinion someone may hold. But declaring the situation to simply be a facade to harvest people’s data seems to me like a reflexive response to avoid uncomfortable truths regarding the situation.
If the government knew every single user on the internet's name, address, phone number and what they had for breakfast, it would not stop monsters like this, or even slow them down.
There will always be weird tail risks. The law should only get involved where there are widespread systemic problems.
People are occasionally hospitalized due to self, family, or friends handling food improperly. That doesn't warrant a legal intervention whereas dining establishments do.
> before someone inevitably says “where were the parents?” and wash their hands of the situation
Nope, that's exactly what I say. The law cannot reasonably replace responsible parenting if society is to remain a pleasant place to live.
Many of us are pretty damn okay at beating back the flame and controlling the flow of the worst of things away from homes, but nobody is perfect.
We don't expect every family and parent in these areas to have fire fighting skills, self evacuation is recommended.
Parents every where now find themselves surrounded by the delibrately laid gasoline of addictive social media and grooming risks et al. and it's infeasible to expect every parent be skilled in defensive cyber secuirty.
It's reasonable to expect communities to want simple barriers and means of protection, the existance of reasonable control and throttling options for parents.
I agree with that however I'm puzzled by your comment because in the context that you're responding to I don't think I said anything that would imply otherwise. Being particularly skilled in "defensive cyber security" isn't a requirement to avoid grooming of your child in the general case - some combination of communication, supervision, and filtering is.
> It's reasonable to expect communities to want simple barriers and means of protection, the existance of reasonable control and throttling options for parents.
I agree 100%! However ID verification is not a reasonable (or even particularly effective) solution to that. I apologize if I've misconstrued your intended meaning but given the broader context that's what it seems like you're implying.
Realistically there's no way to prevent grooming other than keeping tabs on your child. The least labor intensive (but also most intrusive) way to do that is probably whitelist parental controls and watching for unauthorized devices. It is not even remotely realistic to expect a communication platform to detect that a child is speaking with an adult they don't know (as opposed to one they do) and also that it isn't a benign interaction (such as a gaming group or etc) and then somehow act on that information (how?) without manufacturing an absurd dystopia in the process.
When it comes to filtering I think it would be reasonable to impose a standard self categorization protocol on all website operators. That would make non-whitelist filtering much more reliable (a boon to parents, educators, and employers) without negatively impacting privacy or personal freedoms.
* there are very few urban population clump on the planet that don't face the threat of child grooming and exploitation, both before and after the digital device explosion.
* that threat vector significantly increased and morphed with the spread of personal digital devices for children; the threat comes no longer from potentially any personal with contact in real life, it has now expanded to include potentially the entire digital world and now can be automated via groomGPT
* A simple "where were the parents" response on a per parent basis is unfair in the sense that spotting grooming in a digital device world is a difficult challenge .. even a simple constrained playground with stock babytalk language construction can be socially backdoored (See: "I want to stick my long-necked Giraffe up your fluffy white bunny" )
* Concerned parents will look for solutions, communities, at local, state, and federal levels should devote resources to providing solutions in informed contexts and graduated levels.
* Unaware parents will exist, and will likely dominate the demographics, or not?
* Is the correct _default_ social policy here (answer varies by country and culture) to shield the less cyber aware from the worst of the worst with filters ... that the better informed can bypass or deselect?
I guess where we diverge on PoV is where the perimeter of swiss cheese protection should extend to.
I'm sure the same government that held the Epstein class responsible will get right on to making sure his proteges are brought to justice, we just need to give up more freedoms first.
Still none of that necessitates the type of mandatory partial-ID verification being pushed by these laws.
Roblox can straightforwardly require ID verification on their own, of both the parent responsible for the account, as well as the children directly (request documentation from their school, birth certificate, etc. Yes, high touch to verify these documents. But we're talking protecting children here, right?)
If anything this type of legislation is about absolving them of the responsibility of doing so!. Imagine a company making their offering "for adults only", with de facto kid usage as parents relent and just let their kid use an older age on the computer.
You are not making a good faith argument when you refute this person by saying this “doesn’t fit your narrative” two comments removed from you telling another person that you have no interest in their statistics because of how you feel.
Idk, I’m in the minority here it seems, but Claude Code has been working pretty well for me. Honestly, it puts out code that is at least as solid as a lot of my coworkers, and in many cases it’s better.
Poor in the US and around the world often don’t have access to the healthcare they need. If you get cancer, are you turning down chemotherapy so you don’t seem soft? Are you turning down your next raise because some teacher somewhere is getting underpaid?
If you want substantive rebuttals you should make a substantive argument first.
It’s the exact opposite, managers are employed to make employees job easier. Employees get the jobs done, managers are there to coordinate that work, remove blockers, and enable workers.
The relationship is reciprocal. I lay the tracks so my supervisees can do their job (and, indeed, have a job to do!). They help me produce far more work for clients than I ever could myself.
OK, but how many markets are Games Awards actively televised in? I believe they have been watched more on YouTube, when I hear watched more than NFL in context of TV discussion I don't think YouTube is the distribution channel, however I followed the wikipedia link and it says "streams" which OK, not how I thought it was being ranked.
If we are ranking on streams however, does this take into account streams of parts of each media? For example streams of Bad Bunny's halftime show, streams of important plays, versus streams of individual awards being presented?
I don't actually care either way, much, since I don't like American football, don't generally like team sports, and don't spend time gaming, but somehow I think the comparison between the two in online streams throws the metrics off.
They do show the Super Bowl internationally however. I had a client in Brisbane who talked to me about it, as he had been watching it. The international audiences don't have to be fans of American football to take an interest in it for social reasons (the same way people watch sports they don't care about during the Olympics)
Four decades on this planet and I still don’t know a single person that watches or has ever watched it. (europe)
Hell, I don’t even know if it’s football or baseball, and I never cared to know. (Ah, your comment says it’s football, I’m sure I will remember — funny enough I have never watched a full game of American football in my life)
Yes, but likely in the exact inverse than what is implied here. Carmack has generational wealth, he is likely fine financially regardless of how AI pans out. The many individuals who feel they should be financially compensated for code they open sourced are likely far more invested financially in that particular outcome.
IP as a concept has always been equal parts dystopian and farcical, and efforts to enforce it have become increasingly strained over time. Property requires scarcity. Ideas aren’t scarce. My consumption of an idea is affected by your consumption of an idea.
AI has simply increased the intensity of this friction between IP and reality to a degree that it can’t be ignored or patched over any longer.
The cheapest part of the research is publicly funded. The extreme costs come from taking the outputs of public research and trialing and developing it into a viable drug.
Pharma profits also aren’t particularly noteworthy. Their revenues are, because of the ubiquity of their need, but profit margins for Pharma is pretty middle of the road compared to other industries.
The digital age presents with it novel forms of danger for children, and for adults for that matter, and there is absolutely no way to effectively address these risks without some amount of reduction in privacy. And before someone inevitably says “where were the parents?” and wash their hands of the situation, a healthy society should care for and protect all children, especially those whose parents do not.
It’s one thing to hold the opinion “I am willing to sacrifice some number of lives, in order to preserve privacy”. That is an honest and potentially justifiable opinion someone may hold. But declaring the situation to simply be a facade to harvest people’s data seems to me like a reflexive response to avoid uncomfortable truths regarding the situation.
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