Child Sexual Abuse Material Persists on X
nytimes.comThe newsworthy thing here, IMO, is that they don’t even seem to be checking images against the NCMEC database
> The U.S. national center shares digital fingerprints with major technology companies so they can scan and remove the imagery. The center’s list is used by Google and Meta, among others. About a third of the images found by The Times were from that list.
NCMEC won't share that database with almost anyone. I wouldn't be surprised if they denied it to Elon.
They were using it in 2024..
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024-01-31_-_...
It also has a fairly high false positive rate, and due to the nature of the content paying someone to verify false positives is near impossible both legally and morally.
“We can’t fight child porn on our platform because it is less moral to run a scanner that may produce false positives and either accept that this may result in blocking some content that isn’t child porn OR pay someone to look at content and verify whether or not it is child porn, so instead we just do the far more moral thing of allowing and profiting from the distribution of child porn" is an interesting, if not exactly convincing, argument.
In quite a few countries, a false positive can lead to someone getting put in prison, entirely without any human viewing said image.
It's all a matter of 'the image hash was on the database, therefore OP is guilty. 10 years incarceration'.
I wouldn't want to be enabling such a system.
> In quite a few countries, a false positive can lead to someone getting put in prison
That can only happen if it is either (1) used by government, or (2) used by private entities in a process flow that includes reports to government.
"There exist countries with criminal justice systems with weak enough standards of proof that a false positive on a scan alone would result in prison", even if 100% true, is not a justification for a firm not making efforts to block child porn distribution on its networks. (It is, OTOH, a justification for working to reform the criminal justice systems in those countries, but that is rather far from the topic here.)
Intentionally viewing what you think is child porn is a crime, but not catching it is not a crime. If you think it's stupid, lobby Congress to change the law.
> Intentionally viewing what you think is child porn is a crime
The entire argument for why verification was even an issue is that the allegedly the scan is not sufficient reason to actually believe that something is child pornoography. But whether or reviewing such a report may or may not be a crime in some jurisdiction somewhere on Earth, the certainty that arguments like that would detract from the point is the reason that of the two (moral and legal) issues raised in the post I responded to, I only said that one of them was ridiculous, and it wasn't the legal one.
NCMEC is the only organization legally allowed to view child porn. For everyone else, they have no legal way to verify. If you don't trust NCMEC to give correct results, the only legal option is not to play.
The Times reporters don't seem to concerned about being charged with a crime
I worked for a startup almost a decade ago that automated this process entirely (reducing the need for human oversight / comparing).
It worked, no one wanted to pay for it. Or were completely locked into Microsoft or other large companies solutions that half worked.
I'm surprised Twitter didn't implement it earlier (before it was bought and rebranded to X).
Also, is The Times admitting they were in possession of the illegal pictures? Does Freedom of the Press protect against that?
From TFA:
> The Times conducted its own scan for child sexual abuse material on X by writing an automated computer program that searched for related terms without displaying the images, which are illegal to view. Links to the images were sent to a Microsoft service that checked whether they were included on lists of known abusive material compiled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and other child safety groups. Matches were verified by analysts at the Canadian Center for Child Protection.
TFA is paywalled and the archive link someone else used didn't work.
Thank you for copy-and-pasting how they did it.
Try turning off VPN for the archive link? It worked for me, but I had to turn off the VPN
I think they’re saying Elon is in possession of it, and they were able to verify it via file hashing compared against the national database.
Are you suggesting the national database maintainers are in possession of illegal pictures and should also have their rights questioned?
The national database maintainers are the only people allowed to have the pictures, for the purpose of maintaining the database.
The only people? What about law enforcement?
I just got access to the NCMEC's hashlists for my startup. It was fairly easy.
What did you say to them?
I said that I ran a company that could benefit from having access to that list, and could benefit NCMEC by reporting when we stumbled upon content which shows up in the list. (It's content scanning software for the adult film industry)
The only conclusion I can come to at this point is that it's a honeypot.
POSIWID.
Can someone explain why the goal is only to remove the images and not go after whoever posted them? You'd think the pool of posters would eventually shrink to zero.
> not go after whoever posted them?
What makes you think they aren't?
Because it's not mentioned anywhere who posted the images in the first place and which prison he or she is now living in.
The complaint in the article is about not taking down the images faster than within an hour.
The point is more that these images should not be uploadable in the first place, since they are trivially validated against the national DB to be CSAM.
And, from TFA:
> The program The Times wrote reported the images to the authorities. The images were removed, but some had been viewed hundreds of times.
Off topic, but gore should be treated the same way legally
Im curious, why?
The argument against CSAM is easy: the creation of the content is clearly harmful to the victims, its viewing and distribution furthers that harm, and its availability has the potential to increase demand.
How do we get to a similar place for gore?
The argument is that the child is revictimized with each viewing. Wouldn't it be the same for a murder victim?
The argument is that distributing child sex abuse material creates a demand for more of it. Wouldn't it be the same for murder videos?
There was a series of photos going around when I was a kid. A girl who died in a car accident. Horrible, gruesome, nightmare inducing photos of the aftermath were shared. The family was victimized by those photos being shared.
We live in a time where vore, nude photos shared without the subject's permission, and AI nudification software are all illegal. Why should it be legal to share photos and videos of violent crimes and accidents? How is that any different?
Thank you for sharing an argument. I for some reason was thinking more like medical gore, which I don’t think should be illegal, but I’m sympathetic to your argument re: violent crime. I don’t know that I agree about car crashes, though.
I haven’t really thought about this before, so I don’t know where I’d personally draw the line, if at all, but I understand better where y’all are coming from now.
What precisely is your definition of gore? Could you define it in a way that makes it illegal to share images of murders and car crashes as entertainment, without criminalizing, say, journalists documenting a war?
CNN covered the Daniel Pearl story just fine without showing the video. There's no good reason to share a murder video for entertainment just like there's no good reason to share a rape video for entertainment.
I didn't say there was a good reason, in fact I agree there is no good reason to share such videos for entertainment.
I asked a specific question about your definition of gore, so I could try to engage with your opinion in good faith without making assumptions. But instead of answering the question, you dodged it with a cherry-picked example that doesn't represent every scenario that I'm considering. That makes me inclined to believe that your position isn't particularly well-considered.
Maybe the reason you get downvoted whenever you bring this up while "nobody has a good argument on why it should remain legal" is because you don't provide enough substance for anyone to argue against...
Definition of gore would be something like photos/videos of people suffering from graphic bodily harm shared for entertainment purposes. Medical stuff shared in a professional setting is different. Crime scene photos shared during an investigation is different. I don't think anyone is arguing about what is and isn't gore.
So, a picture of someone "sleeping" with no obvious bodily harm isn't gore .. regardless of whether they're sleeping or whether they've been poisoned?
Yesterday morning I watched, as I was weeding, a mobile abattoir operator stun, drain blood, skin, gut and hang in a portable cool room eight full weight sheep, turning them over at about 12 minutes per sheep - pretty decent pace.
Later I helped make a bonfire to burn the eight sets of skins, heads, guts, trotters (which we shovelled and slung from a single axle trailer onto the wood pallets on top of the stacked wood underneath).
Some of this was filmed and posted to my 91 year old father (by the land owner) - is that "gore" ?
Yeah that's disgusting
It's pretty routine.
I'm thinking this is more about what you personally find disgusting and seeking to impose that PoV on everyone; butchers, nurses, first responders, farmers, etc.
Which is understandable, but wrong headed.
I was specifically talking about photos and videos of people who have been murdered or died in accidents. Those photos should not be shared for entertainment just the same as photos of children being raped should not be shared for entertainment.
Yes, I do believe that killing animals is morally wrong, but that isn't what I was talking about.
You might want to review all that you have said, you started (IIRC) with "gore" (ill defined) to be treated as "Child Sexual Abuse Material" is - banned from the internet and a chargeable offence.
As an aside: I'm in the "victims of crime should be shielded from publication, especially prior to trial" camp - I'm even prepared to support the notion that perpetrators of crime should be largely scrubbed rather than glorified by the obsessive.
You're still not clear on where your proposed boundaries lie; Daniel Pearl was filmed being killed - that's a snuff video and quite distinct from "photos of people who have been murdered" - eg: I could link to a photo of Martin Luther King and I would assume that would be fine for you.
Perhaps work on sharpening your language about what is and isn't to be allowed in your new world order.
For example, my father, in his prime working for the St John's Volunteer Ambulance in remote areas, would likely have wanted at various times to have sent video of an impaled accident victim, still alive and in pain, to various doctors / fire responders, etc. in order to get pragmatic advice on how to stabilise and extract them.
This would effectively be transmitted torture porn.
This thread is so weird. Several people asking why gore should be as illegal as child porn, but with no followup from anyone so far with reasons. I am not trying to be sarcastic in asking why. I am legitimately curious.
I'm at work and also don't like typing on my phone. I replied with my reasoning now
Because? Death is an inevitable part of life. If anything, it reminds you appreciate you feeble existence a little more.
Rape is a very common crime. Doesn't mean it's ok to film and share it. So why is it ok to share murder videos?
Why? What about surgical videos?
I remember in the old days of the discovery channel or maybe it was the learning channel they had surgery videos. Very interesting, very gory.
What about them?
They are very gory.
Exactly.
I get downvoted whenever I bring this up but nobody has a good argument on why it should remain legal.
Well, you probably haven’t asked anyone who knows. The government doesn’t have a compelling interest. Banning it wouldn’t be narrowly targeted.
Can you provide a compelling argument for why it should be illegal?
Anybody has a good argument why it should be illegal?
Arguably the average person needs to be exposed to more gore lest they become dangerously detached from the real world. People who live in sanitized bubbles end up creating systems that kill far more people because they cannot see the results of their actions. China censors all violent crime, it's basically illegal to report on. How do you think that's working out?
Twitter/X should be held liable.
*taps the sign*
Repealing Section 230 When You Disagree With It Creates An Even Bigger Incentive For Abuse
I thought all maps moved to bluesky?
It took me a bit to realize you mean "MAPs" (so-called "Minor Attracted Persons") and not cartographical instruments.
The guidelines specifically list name collisions as a tangential annoyance to skip "They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't think that "label" even applies if they're posting such content
It shouldn't be a label at all. Pedofiles should be called as such, or worse.
Americans give them the label “Commander in Chief”
Surely, X should be shut down by some act of god.
For the government to subsequently reopen it?
There has never been a more blatant honeypot in the history of American social media.
Not surprising.
Musk displayed uncommonly detailed knowledge of the Southeast Asian child sex trade in the aftermath of the Thai Cave Crisis. It's not a big stretch to allowing CSAM on his own social media network.