Online Safety Bill Etc

[RichardCoulter]

Was rather upset after watching the 6pm news. A 26 year old Belfast man befriended girls between 10 and 12 and pretended to be a little girl himself.

Once he'd persuaded them to send indecent pictures, he threatened to send them to their friends & family, unless they sent him more indecent & humiliating photos.

One 12 year old couldn't face what was happening and committed suicide.

The report went on to say that, with the advent of the Online Safety Act, safeguards were now being implemented to try and prevent this from ever happening again.

This is why i'm glad that Instagram etc are finally being made to take the safety of their users seriously. This is not a waste of resources, from wherever they are derived.

You seem to confuse desire with reality.

safeguards were now being implemented to try and prevent

There is little indication it will succeed, people always find ways around measures.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Paul

You seem to confuse desire with reality.



There is little indication it will succeed, people always find ways around measures.

Which of the measures don't you think will succeed?

[QUOTE=RichardCoulter;36184881]Any of them.

First they rely on children/teens not lying about their age (newsflash, they do).

Then they actually do very little, one of them is "not receive notifications at night time" - wow, that'll make things so much "safer". They also rely on parent accounts not giving them permissions. Most wont care and just give them what they want (for an easy life) and many kids will just know their parents passwords anyway.

It also relies on parents having accounts at all (many do not) - hows that going to work exactly ?

Also AI hasn't helped matters..I'm just thinking that it's going to complicate life in so many ways we haven't discovered yet as it becomes the usual given reason for any issue raised by anyone. Social media is working out how to deal or accept AI.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Maggy

Also AI hasn't helped matters..I'm just thinking that it's going to complicate life in so many ways we haven't discovered yet as it becomes the usual given reason for any issue raised by anyone. Social media is working out how to deal or accept AI.

Very true. A woman posted on Facebook that she 'Could murder a gin and tonic' after a hard day's work that she'd had and was temporarily suspended for making a threat to kill! A human being would have understood that this wasn't a threat to kill somebody, but the Facebook AI did not.

AI is used by them to cut costs as is the outsourcing of the moderation function to poorer places like Africa, where those with few employment prospects do it for $1 an hour!

To be fair, their business model depends on thousands of posts being made per day, so I think it would be unrealistic to expect a human to check every post.

The problem to me seems to be that, when it gets things wrong, it's impossible to contact a human and people are fobbed off with the usual tactics so prevalent today that companies use to bat people away eg useless AI Chatbots.

You might be interested in this programme that covers the interaction between the Online Safety Act, AI and the future of moderation:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024x4j

Over 500 hours of video are posted on YouTube every minute. Over 4 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every hour. There are around 500 million posts to X (formerly Twitter) every single day. These numbers are growing by the second.

How do you even begin to monitor and police such a relentless avalanche of information? In this new series, Zoe Kleinman journeys into the world of the online content moderators.

Big social media platforms rely on automation for much of the work, but they also need an army of human moderators to screen out the content that is harmful. Many moderators spend their days looking at graphic imagery, including footage of killings, war zones, torture and self-harm. We hear many stories about what happens when this content falls through the net, but we don’t hear much about the people trying to contain it. This is their story.

The battle against harmful online content is hitting the headlines more every day, even as AI moderation gathers pace. Ironically it needs moderation itself

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Very true. A woman posted on Facebook that she 'Could murder a gin and tonic' after a hard day's work that she'd had and was temporarily suspended for making a threat to kill! A human being would have understood that this wasn't a threat to kill somebody, but the Facebook AI did not.

AI is used by them to cut costs as is the outsourcing of the moderation function to poorer places like Africa, where those with few employment prospects do it for $1 an hour!

To be fair, their business model depends on thousands of posts being made per day, so I think it would be unrealistic to expect a human to check every post.

The problem to me seems to be that, when it gets things wrong, it's impossible to contact a human and people are fobbed off with the usual tactics so prevalent today that companies use to bat people away eg useless AI Chatbots.

You might be interested in this programme that covers the interaction between the Online Safety Act, AI and the future of moderation:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024x4j

The AI mod algorithm on FB can be a bit useless. I got a 2 days ban for using Nazi and Hitler in a comment on a page where there was discussion around architecture and historic buildings and i talked how much they bombed and destroyed during WWII. AI still has a lot of learning to do.

[Itshim]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Which of the measures don't you think will succeed?

All of them

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Stephen

The AI mod algorithm on FB can be a bit useless. I got a 2 days ban for using Nazi and Hitler in a comment on a page where there was discussion around architecture and historic buildings and i talked how much they bombed and destroyed during WWII. AI still has a lot of learning to do.

Yes, it doesn't seem to understand the concept of context and is still taking everything literally.

[Russ]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Yes, it doesn't seem to understand the concept of context and is still taking everything literally.

I know a lot of people who do that too.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Russ

I know a lot of people who do that too.

Indeed. I know someone with aspergers and if someone were to say "It's raining cats and dogs outside", he'd go outside looking for cats and dogs, so it must be a symptom of the condition and possibly other neuro diverse conditions too.

I haven't seen you around for some time, I do hope that you are keeping well.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

I know someone with aspergers and if someone were to say "It's raining cats and dogs outside", he'd go outside looking for cats and dogs

Well if he did it with out a reinforced umbrella or a hard hat, he would not only be on the spectrum, but he’d be an idiot as well.


I call bullshit, to that anecdote. Just because you’re autistic doesn’t make you an idiot, far from it, and that anecdote is an idiotic one.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Well if he did it with out a reinforced umbrella or a hard hat, he would not only be on the spectrum, but he’d be an idiot as well.


I call bullshit, to that anecdote. Just because you’re autistic doesn’t make you an idiot, far from it, and that anecdote is an idiotic one.

It depends upon what form and how severe one's autism is. There are many variations.

I'm afraid that I will now have to bring our discussion about this to an end as admin have stated that this one is only to be used for discussion of the Online Safety Act and nothing else.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Indeed. I know someone with aspergers and if someone were to say "It's raining cats and dogs outside", he'd go outside looking for cats and dogs, so it must be a symptom of the condition and possibly other neuro diverse conditions too.

I haven't seen you around for some time, I do hope that you are keeping well.

As a disorder, not every single person exhibits the exact same 'symptoms. It is different for everyone.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Paul

You seem to confuse desire with reality.



There is little indication it will succeed, people always find ways around measures.

Ofcom research has found that 20% of children aged between 8 and 17 in the UK have lied about their age in order to join sites that aren't meant for them.

This figure has been consistent for the last two years, despite the efforts of websites to introduce age verification and other tools by technology firms.

Protecting children from harm will be a legal requirement once the Online Safety Act is fully operational in 2025 and website owners will be required to ensure that children below the age of 13 do not have access to their sites.

In Australia they are in the process of banning social media for those under 16.

Broadly speaking, in order to comply with this, websites are to introduce age verification by the use of a document such as school or bank records, age estimation by looking at the things that vary with age, such as facial features or voice and looking at things that mean that they are likely to be an adult eg are they married, do they have a mortgage etc. If they are in breach of this requirement they can be fined up to $32.5 million dollars.

As they are often the same companies involved, I suspect that websites in the UK will follow suit in order to meet next year's requirements.