It's very disconcerting to think that this "innocent" toy or clothing I see my children playing with as "tainted" by this monster. Suddenly he's not just some nebulous monster out there, but in some way the idea of him is here with my children, arousing protective instincts without anything in particular to direct that energy towards.
It also shows him as a human like other humans, which then makes me ponder is that person walking down the street also a monster? Could I become a monster like Epstein?
I really do wish more people in society would think about this - "The Banality of Evil" and all that. Maybe then we'd all be better at preventing the spread of this kind of evil.
When I was an early teen I had access to the internet but my activities weren't entirely unsupervised (and I doubt yours were either). Since it was a new technology there was a lot of discussion around how best to talk to children and make sure they felt safe reporting threats or harms to parents.
A smart phone is too disconnected of a device when compared to the desktops we all grew up on. No one is talking about fully banning <18s from the internet (at least no one serious) - it's a discussion about making sure that the way folks <18 use the internet is reasonably safe and that parents can make sure their children aren't being exposed to undue harm. That's quite difficult to do with a fully enabled smart phone.
Thinking back to that I was very well aware of the fucked up part of the internet much more so than most adults around me. People did in fact meet up in person with strangers from the internet even back then.
I think it's more important to teach around age 10-14 about the dark side of the internet so that late teens can know how to stay safe. Rather than simply throwing them into the reality of it unprepared as "adults".
Also frankly I don't want to know the search history of a late teen. There's a degree of privacy everyone is entitled to.
Do you think the younger generations are properly prepared to view the internet as having a dark side? My impression has been that such an early introduction has caused those warnings to be delayed and lost and younger folks are much more trusting of the internet than most millenials were.
It's also important to acknowledge that kids that used the internet weren't everyone in our day and the usage of the internet varied wildly. While now-a-days it's an expectation for everyone to be at least moderately online (often required by academia) and often that their presences are tied to their real names.
I think so yes. What's acceptable changes over time. Gore "content" of WW2 is now presented to 12 year olds as history.
It's not the porn or the LiveLeak gore content that would have me worried. It's groomers and other adults with bad intentions. Not something you can easily block and not something this ID check will stop. A groomer will slow burn a social relationship with someone until they are legal adults. That's something you can only teach someone to look out for. And even adults are susceptible to this.
I remain skeptical. I have some 20sish cousins that seem to be highly aware of the potential dangers online and were pretty clear eyed about it in their teens - but the relatives I have that are five years younger seem absurdly trusting. This is empirical of course but it's concerning to me.
Pretty devious tactic if so. Chilling effect on both any further witnesses and anybody interested in archiving the data (gives them an ethical conundrum at least). In addition to giving them (the feds) a convenient excuse to take down random docs.
The Sun Eater series is an interesting one that kind of goes both ways. The big alien baddies are basically demons, and humanity gets a lot of love, but all the politicking and whatnot shows humanity to be both good and bad
They aren't trying to pervert the children. This isn't some cabal.
It's just money.
It's just people trying to get children's eyeballs to collect minuscule ad revenue.
It's the same as the people who abuse their kids for a Youtube channel, or the russian companies that put out 10 """DIY""" shorts a day which are just fake.
Youtube rewards constant churning content creation, so that's what is done
Yes, spiderman and Elsa on YouTube is a prime example. It's just slop for kids, they're not even in the same universe. But kids like spiderman, and they also like Elsa, so... here we are.
This is interesting; I always assumed that the Grimm's tales and all kinds of folklore throughout cultures and history were responding to anxieties about, say, super-high rates of infant death.
It would be, in a way, hilarious if it was all just lazy writing the entire time.
Its the messy application of FDR's claim that the USA should be the arsenal of democracy and should protect people everywhere. Which sounds all well and good, until you get different ideas about what is the best and that 'I' know better than you. Basically all the mess of the Cold War and propaganda and advertising
It also shows him as a human like other humans, which then makes me ponder is that person walking down the street also a monster? Could I become a monster like Epstein?
Such thoughts are very disconcerting
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