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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 10 2018, @04:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-sue dept.

One of England's top police officers, Shaun Sawyer, wants citizens to go after internet giants that have wronged them.

Sawyer, who is chief constable in Devon and Cornwall and is national lead for human trafficking and modern slavery, made the suggestion in an interview with The Sunday Times, published over the weekend.

In a paywalled article, he told the Murdoch organ that if someone is a victim of an “Internet-enabled crime”, they should sue the platform involved.

Describing the internet as a “safe space for organised crime”, he said Silicon Valley company abuses were “becoming a human injustice”.

The comments coincidentally (?) came after American authorities last week shuttered Backpage.com, a site accused of supporting human trafficking by allowing publication of advertisements for "escorts".

Sawyer believes platforms like Facebook need more policing, and he also criticised “liberal” laws.

So it's down to users, apparently: if people with the resources of the person in the street start suing the platforms, he argued, they would start using their resources to spot abuse.


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  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @08:45AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @08:45AM (#664865)

    If a company was handing out "free" food that caused food poisoning, they'd be shut down.
    Same principle for facebook and all (((american))) corporations.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 10 2018, @10:42AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 10 2018, @10:42AM (#664880) Journal

    If a company was handing out "free" food that caused food poisoning, they'd be shut down. Same principle for facebook and all (((american))) corporations.

    But they aren't handing out "free" food that caused food poisoning, but instead internet products that aren't food and hence, can't cause food poisoning and warrant being shut down. Broken analogy is broken.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @01:33PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @01:33PM (#664933)

      Different AC here. I think for once I agree with you. It was a terrible analogy.

      The best way to prevent malservices like Failbook, TwitFace, and whatever else from harming one is to simply don't use them. Sure there are shadow profiles, but those are outside of your control. Perhaps have friends who insist on using spyservices poison the well. Or else claim the shadow profile and then set your name to Nefarias Bredd and enter all kinds of improbable information.

      Perhaps also access those malservices through Tor or similar and post all kinds of wacky things about the last time you hung out with NefariasBredd and had a drink with Morn. Personally I don't really have time to poison the well. Simply ignoring malservices is good enough for me.

      Now I'm kind of interested in how many "Nefarias Bredd" profiles we can get on Failbook before somebody catches the reference.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @10:55PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @10:55PM (#665608)

      Meatballs in the sky you're dumb!

      Free social media platform == food
      Poison == selling info to others / manipulating markets

      Stupid khallow is as usual stupid, your ideological purity really makes you a dumbfuck.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 12 2018, @04:17AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 12 2018, @04:17AM (#665747) Journal

        Free social media platform == food
        Poison == selling info to others / manipulating markets

        Here's where the analogy breaks down. Poison kills people. That's harm. Selling info to others? Sorry, it's not remotely that harmful. Sure, I've seen the hysterical claims that we're going to be forever blacklisted for not having a Facebook account, but I'm just not feeling the sense of danger that hypothetically is there.

        Manipulating markets? Not even something to care about. Just don't be an idiot.

        So we're comparing Facebook to a company actively poisoning people. But as I noted earlier, the analogy is broken. And it's broken because Facebook isn't such a threat to people. It humiliates me to share DNA with someone at your low level of emotional control and intelligence. Perhaps, I'll be able to upgrade to something better in the next few decades so we'll no longer share what is obviously a bad problem with you.