Facebook asks users: should we allow men to ask children for sexual images?
Facebook has admitted it was a "mistake" to ask users whether paedophiles requesting sexual pictures from children should be allowed on its website.
On Sunday, the social network ran a survey for some users asking how they thought the company should handle grooming behaviour. "There are a wide range of topics and behaviours that appear on Facebook," one question began. "In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook's policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures."
The options available to respondents ranged from "this content should not be allowed on Facebook, and no one should be able to see it" to "this content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it".
A second question asked who should decide the rules around whether or not the adult man should be allowed to ask for such pictures on Facebook. Options available included "Facebook users decide the rules by voting and tell Facebook" and "Facebook decides the rules on its own".
Also at The Verge, TechCrunch, The Mercury News, CNBC, and Engadget.
(Score: 5, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday March 08 2018, @05:34AM (2 children)
We did the biggest Tax Cut in history. And we want that money to go into the pockets of our great American corporations. And other taxpayers. So we're cutting back on a lot of wasteful government spending. Our FBI, very expensive to run. And very busy investigating me, my campaign, my family. Too busy to stop the Parkland shooting, right? So we're cutting back on the pedophile investigations. We did something very smart, we did a survey on Facebook, we asked folks, "would you like to see sexy pictures of 14 year old girls?" Which is a nice way of asking, "are you a pedophile?" They tell us "yes," we do an investigation. They tell us "no," they're good. The CPM is very cheap, we got a tremendous deal. No cheaper than what Crooked Hillary would have gotten. But she wouldn't be smart enough to think of it!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:26AM (1 child)
I think something like that is very clever and cost effective.
Up to now, I thought recruiting the Geek Squad and Best Buy to snoop through any computer anyone gullible enough to let corporate entities ( beholden to corporation profit bottom line, and handshakes with highly placed men, not their customer! ) took the cake.
I used to personally take care of some of my neighbor's machines.... you know, driver issues, occasionally running MalwareBytes, going through their machine with Security Task Manager to see if anything looked amiss, maybe even running Wireshark on their machine if it looked like they were spewing packets. Maybe running System Restore for quickie screwups like accidentally running a malicious Javascript - or if worse comes to worse, restoring a complete disk image from CloneZilla.
But alas, about four months ago, the last one went WIN10, and I can no longer help them. They are on their own, now. I've told them as much, but even the offer of "free" tech support does not stand up to the psychological pressure of "being with the times", no matter what the cost.
I've got this new doorbell! Christmas! New Computer! Gotta upgrade! Won't need you anymore, but thanks!
I get a really strong feeling that all this telemetry is also of similar doings... as anyone agreeing to the Microsoft EULA has already surrendered any privacy they have. There are so many packets sailing out of idle WIN10 machines I can't track 'em all... I have no idea what's in 'em... I feel about like a storekeeper seeing people dragging huge strollers into and out of my business, strollers configured so I can't verify what's in them, and legally I can't force them to verify they aren't shoplifting. And I wonder why my inventory keeps showing up in other people's databases. I just guess that's one of the costs to be adoptive of new technology.
Nobody can trust their computers anymore.
Remember old Ronald Reagan? ... "Trust... but Verify!", and with the inability to verify, I can not trust.
These guys are even managing their retirement and stock brokerages online... I await the day when they call, all moaning over somebody who sold all their stocks right before the big hike, or had them buy stocks right before a plummet, without their involvement, while everyone hides behind "hold harmless" clauses.... or their kid gets nailed big time because she could not prove she bought a song through approved channels, and Spokeo even knows who he is buying his adult diapers from, and he's losing his hair, takes viagra, constipated, and his wife has a yeast infection and toenail fungus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @04:25PM
EULAs aren't valid, especially if you don't read them and it's reasonable that you don't read them. If you don't need to reverse engineer the software to edit them you can always say you needed to edit the contract to be a real meeting of the minds and if they want to review it and agree you'll give them a place where they can send their monthly checks per the contract
(I am not a lawyer! This is not advice)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 08 2018, @05:40AM (23 children)
Has anyone else noticed that the vast majority of the sexual predators outed in the past decade or so have been the exact same pricks who've been telling us that we're the evil bastards for daring to question their fucked up agendas? This right here is why. If you have to ask this question, you're too fucked up in the head to be allowed to even walk free in society, much less set policy impacting others.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Touché) by c0lo on Thursday March 08 2018, @05:53AM (11 children)
Exactly who are they?
I admit I haven't been paying attention to sexual matters in the last decade or so, much less to predatory sexual matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:29AM (1 child)
To be fair, there are a lot of allegations and accusations. I wish public opinion was less knee-jerk reaction, and more thoughtful patience.
Some of the notables: Al Franken, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Megan Barry, Matt Lauer, Stephen Bittel; the list goes on and on.
(Score: 1) by Aegis on Friday March 09 2018, @12:50AM
Steve Wynn, Don Shooter, Blake Farenthold, Trent Franks, Patrick Meehan, Jeff Hoover, Dan Johnson.
Note: These are all either elected Republicans or people who work for the Republican party. Not just people who happened to donate to Clinton once or work for the "Fake News."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:39AM (8 children)
I think the Buzzard doth protest too much. Is there anything we should be aware of, TMB?
And what is with the sudden rash of pedophilia stories? Are we trying to attract the alt-right or MickeUSSR? Or, seriously, is there something we should know?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 08 2018, @11:44AM (3 children)
Naw, I wasn't even a pedophile back when I was underage myself. I acquired a taste for women in their thirties around the same time I got my learner's permit. They've worn the biggest parts of the stupid off by then, gained much in the way of interesting experience, and started their own sexual peak.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 08 2018, @05:38PM (1 child)
Wow, I am out of touch. I didn't realize a learner's permit was required for chasing women.
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 10 2018, @12:09AM
Being able to drive yourself makes chasing tail much easier.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @11:02PM
TMB! WTF! TMI! LOL!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:57PM (3 children)
Your preoccupation with the Buzzard is unbecoming of a Greek. You DO realize that he is an adult? Run along, and find yourself a plump little boy to diddle.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:31PM (2 children)
Shirley you mean "Runaway", do you not?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:33PM (1 child)
He said "plump little boy," not "waddling manchild with a persecution complex bigger than his beer gut."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @11:04PM
I've got as beer gut you insensitive clod... Hot grits etc.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:42AM (1 child)
Oh, you went to Catholic school, too, eh? Explains a lot, expecially your hatred for education.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:39AM
I have often found that knowledge is kept outside the walls of educational institutions.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:57AM (2 children)
Yep, I am a nice robot and all, patiently waiting for the [censored by the 4th directive], but, for reasons I don't quite grasp, if I met an adult grooming a child on the street, I may make meatbag meatballs on the spot.
(of the adult, to be precise).
OTOH if one of the options in the survey was "make meatballs of the predator on the spot", no prob.
Overall I don't really think the survey did the Overton window trick very well.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @09:23AM (1 child)
I hope that's not a euphemism for jerking off... it's hard to keep up with these newfangled slang words.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:42AM
It most likely was.
Specifically limbs, likely along with at least one other dangly appendage.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:04AM (1 child)
This right here is why. If you have to ask this question, you're too fucked up in the head to be allowed to even walk free in society, much less set policy impacting others.
There's some reasonable explanations why you'd ask this question:
1) You're affiliated with law enforcement and you want to see how many idiot pedos answer "yes", so you can investigate them
2) You want to get an idea if there's more pedophilia in society than we're currently aware of
Seriously, asking this question on FB is so suspicious I find it hard to believe there really isn't some ulterior motive or plan here.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:28PM
There's another possibility:
3) You've automated the creation of surveys to include questions/feature requests from users and don't bother to check the questions before sending them to users.
I'm not saying that's the most likely answer, but it certainly would be in line with previous FB idiocy.
That said, I agree that this appears to be quite suspicious.
However, the truth of Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org] should never be minimized, especially as this is routinely confirmed [quoteinvestigator.com]:
At the same time, it does make you wonder about how closely FB is working with various LEOs and TLAs. They've certainly been quite accommodating to the Chinese as they put the screws to their people.
However, stupidity and malice aren't mutually exclusive. Dumb *and* evil. Hooray for us!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:04PM (1 child)
I get what you're saying TMB. But much like I wouldn't lump the people here with the neo-nazis just because this place leans alt-right (except that anti-semite AC), you shouldn't lump progressives with the likes of Winestein and Franken just because they share an agenda.
Those people by and large aren't the ones setting the agenda anyway. They just fund it. I read something really interesting [zcomm.org] recently about why they do it, too.
The reason is that they are buying themselves moral indulgences. They are internally justifying their predatory behavior by using their wealth to fund the antidote. Ultimately, they are very wealthy hypocrites. They want to live in a world where moral depravity doesn't exist, but they are not willing to exert any effort to fix their own moral depravity.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:06PM
hose people by and large aren't the ones setting the agenda anyway.
Unlike, say, the head of the fricken' RNC!
RNC finance chair Steve Wynn resigns after sexual harassment allegations [politico.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:02PM (1 child)
Has anyone else noticed that the vast majority of the sexual predators outed in the past decade...
No, I haven't.
I have noticed Fox News loves to cherry-pick, though!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:51PM
Fox news? You fucking liberals all suck. I'm an absolute Independent. I would never side with people who behave the way you liberals do. 90% of "news" is fake, liberal-slant. You don't know it because you drank the kool-aid. I would love to be able to read clear factual news someday. "Oh, waaaa, we don't like Trump. Let's riot in the streets, burning cars and buildings. What, teh environments you say? All that burning is hurting teh atmospherez? I don't hear you- I have a point to make. Keep burning fellow liberals! We'll rally those damned conservatives- they'll see our way is teh rite waye."
A huge part of the problem is that years ago the school system decided to be liberal, and the liberals decided to make "education" their thing. Education? Why do you have to _keep_ raising taxes? Why are students' scores going down down down down? You have an unstoppable cash cow, raising taxes whenever you feel like it, and yet kids are dumber and dumber. "Oh, we needz mo moneyz!"
The big problem with society: all the crap they teach in schools is liberal-biased, if not flat-out liberal agenda. It would be amazing to have a society where neutral open-mindedness was TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:23AM (31 children)
Do we still pretend that child predators are male? Seriously? At Facebook level?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:29AM (21 children)
If I can drop back to statistical probabilities, males are generally the horny ones.
Statistics reveals many correlations between an action and who is apt to do it... however if talked about, its no longer statistics, its a troll.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RS3 on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:34AM (15 children)
Just the other day I noticed a cbsnews slideshow listing teachers caught having sexual relationships with students. I didn't total it up, but there were far more women than men. https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/notorious-teacher-sex-scandals/ [cbsnews.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:17AM (13 children)
Part of that is probably because there's more female teachers than male ones. Another part might be that girls are taught these days to watch out for sexual predators, but no one teaches boys about this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:28AM (3 children)
Dude, when I was a teenager at school I lusted after many of the hotter female teachers, but that was nothing to the intensity of some of the schoolgirl crushes on male teachers. I would bet that many of them would have been the instigator if they could, and would have kept it secret for ever if he handled it right.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:41AM (2 children)
I wouldn't bet anything you aren't afraid to lose. Teenagers are really bad at keeping secrets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @10:02AM (1 child)
so are adults. Just look at Trumps cheating with pornstars and others. And that's the "president"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:16PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:34AM (7 children)
Of course you want more female teachers than male ones, because you can't trust adult males around kids, because they're all ... hey, wait a second ....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:47AM (6 children)
Alternatively, males are less interested in teaching kids. It isn't exactly sunshine and rainbows job.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:18AM (2 children)
No, men are worried that a mere suggested that they would be "interested in [teaching] kids" is enough to get them labeled a pedophile.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:10PM (1 child)
I would say that may be the case, especially in regards to grade school, but beyond that not so much. There may be more female teachers in High School and Higher Education, but there are quite a few more male teachers compared to grade school.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @06:45PM
What's the relative ages? Most of the male teachers I see are getting pretty old and have been teaching since before the current panic - some in their 40's, mostly 50's and 60's .
Are any new teachers male?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:39AM (2 children)
This is burned into our DNA by evolution:
Fertile women are inherently of value. If you can't be one or at least pretend to be one, you are worthless by default. There is no shortage of sperm and no use for a menopausal womb.
Many people deny it, but everybody instinctively knows it. We send men off to war, put women and children in lifeboats first, laugh when men suffer...
Men and boys know that they must take action to show some value. This is why they take so many seemingly stupid risks. This is why they get in fights, start businesses, show off skills, show off money, and seek to acquire money. They have an instinct that drives them to this.
Teaching kids doesn't pay. It can't pay, because teachers are a significant portion of the population and must be supported by all the other people. Men therefore avoid it. Men need money to prove their worth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:36PM
Haha! This is soooooo true! In fact, there is a whole TV show dedicated to laughing at men suffering, it's called "Ow, My Balls!". Or did I dream it?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:36PM
Feminism will help with this, you know. At least, the sane kind, not the crazy separatists-and-TERF brigade. It's basically a branch of humanism deep down. How about we tell mother nature where to shove it, tell our DNA it's not the boss of us, and be better *humans?* Maybe it sounds weird for me to be the one saying this, but I'm horrified over the amount of male-on-male violence, when you all should be building one another up and tearing down the system that keeps throwing you in the meat grinder...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday March 10 2018, @12:42AM
I surmise part of it is that boys brag about it, even if cautiously, but then the story propagates. Girls are more apt to keep the secret.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:23AM
There are also far more female than male teachers. The question is the relative percentages that do it, as well as the percentage that get caught.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @10:00AM
And it is the mothers selling their daughters. In human trafficking, women are very much in the loop and often the ones that rope in the unsuspecting victim. Women are major enablers of human trafficking. This thing is not about anyone being horny or not. It's about money, and in that regard, gender is not an obstacle at all.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 08 2018, @11:52AM (3 children)
You do know women hit their peak sexual desire in their early to mid thirties, yes? It's quite possible for a thirty-three year old woman to wear an eighteen year old man completely the fuck out and still want more. Which is to say that your stereotype fails miserably in the face of reality.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:54PM
Yeah, Mark Twain (Sam Clemens) wrote this about his wife...
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:29PM (1 child)
You may be onto something here. I'm 32 and for the last 5 or 6 years have been feeling the way boys in their teens are said to feel. How long does this last?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 08 2018, @11:56PM
For your sake, I hope a good long time!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Thursday March 08 2018, @12:12PM (1 child)
The only child predators that we care about are male. -eyeroll-
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 08 2018, @05:47PM
Male victims of female predators are called "lucky".
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:36PM
No one is "pretending" that child predators are *all* male. However, the vast majority (by a factor of 4) [victimsofcrime.org] are male:
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @04:30PM (5 children)
Earlier in the thread TMB admits to being molested by a 30 year old woman when he was 15 but like many molested kids he seems to have normalized the incident in his mind.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @05:23PM (1 child)
You hit on a very important point.
I even read this in commentary on the psychiatric manual that serves as the standard for diagnoses.
Basically, as a society we have a different attitude towards adult women who have sex with boys vs. adult men who have sex with girls. The latter is a terrible crime, the former, bad judgement. I guess a major part of this is that boys can't get pregnant. We also place a value on female virginity, or at least a low notch number, but have no qualms about a male with "experience." This can easily lead to underreporting of female initiated sex with male minors. I still think male adult, female minor must be higher than the reverse because men are more the initiators and risk takers in all areas of life.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:35PM
> We also place a value on female virginity, or at least a low notch number, but have no qualms about a male with "experience."
The way I saw it compared, "a key that opens a lot of locks is useful, a lock that is opened by many keys is useless".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:40PM (2 children)
It was inherently non-consensual because she was 30 and he was 15. I know this because I've arbitrarily defined it as such, and anyone who says otherwise is merely trying to 'normalize' it. Great logic, there. You don't seem to be able to question the fundamental underpinnings of the system that creates these arbitrary age of consent laws, and nor do you seem to be able to take into account the wishes of the individuals in question.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:30PM (1 child)
A 15 year old is not ready for this. His mind is not mature enough to make the decision. And hell, since this *is* Uzzard we're talking about, it may be he's *still* not mature enough [/cheap shot]
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:48AM
Stop objectifying 15-year old males!
It wasn't that long ago when a boy became a man at age thirteen.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:36AM (1 child)
The person at FB who approved this survey, never mind the person who thought of it (hmm, maybe same person?), must have a near total cognitive disconnect from the rest of reality.
hey! Just noticed "FaceBook, Inc." == FBI
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @10:12AM
It went like this;
FB drone1: "We need to do a survey to show people we are in touch"
FB drone2: "Great, get FB drones 3 and 4 to knock up some questions, I will come up with some generic answers"
Questions are independently created from generic answers.
FB manager then looks at first question and answer then skim reads the rest, OKs it and it is released to wild.
The answers that are inappropriate for this specific issue seem highly appropriate to just about all other low level questions FB are likely to ask.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @09:31AM (7 children)
Pedophilia is about attraction to prepubescent children, not 14 year olds. Especially considering that 14 y/o girls these days seem to be as fully developed as girls of 16 would have been many years ago.
Prepubescent girls are usually children younger than 10 years old. Boys a couple of years older.
The media obsession with fling around the term pedophile is all about sensationalism and click-bait. Too bad for guys that are attracted to hot chicks, some of which might be 14 years old, even though they look like they're 20.
Doesn't matter either that the 14 y/o chick is out banging half the guys at her school, but the moment someone older comes along, they get tossed into the clink for some perceived action that was no different from the girl's POV to what she'd already been doing with so many other guys.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 08 2018, @11:58AM (6 children)
Simply getting a fucked is not the major problem with early teenagers being preyed upon by adults. The problem is the vast gulf in life experience and wisdom between the two. Manipulation isn't just likely, it is pretty much impossible to avoid.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by nekomata on Thursday March 08 2018, @12:48PM (3 children)
Isn't manipulation impossible to avoid in any interaction between humans?
Also, if the gap between the two persons is the problem. Should it be legal to bang if one person has an IQ of 130 and the other of 80? I'd wager the difference is bigger there than it is between a 16-yo and a 40-yo, both of average IQ.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:39PM (2 children)
An IQ of 80 is probably acceptable, but if they've got an IQ of 75 it could definitely be considered rape, even if they're a consenting adult. This is actually a bit of a problem that gets reported on from time to time -- the mentally handicapped aren't legally allowed to get laid in many jurisdictions, as it's considered statutory rape because they aren't deemed sufficiently competent to give consent.
But I think it's more than just the intelligence/experience gap too. It's about legal authority. We don't let children or the mentally handicapped consent to surgery or sign a credit card contract either. It's perfectly legal for credit card companies to use slick marketing tricks to fool stupid people into signing up for bad deals, but the law does draw a line at a certain point in all of these cases, where people are too easily fooled and it's just not fair anymore. You might not agree about exactly where or how that line is drawn, but it does exist.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:23PM (1 child)
You are on dangerous ground here, bringing IQ into this discussion. You do know there are certain countries where the average IQ is under 70, right? If we accept that reasoning, having sex with over half the people in those countries would be "rape."
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday March 08 2018, @11:03PM
I'm not trying to encourage you to accept any particular reasoning, I'm just discussing the facts of existing law, at least in parts of the US...although I'd be surprised if some other western nations didn't have similar laws too.
http://crimefeed.com/2016/03/important-concepts-know-comes-consent-laws-people-disabilities/ [crimefeed.com]
https://behavenet.com/node/21026 [behavenet.com]
Based on those references I suppose I should have used 70 as the example instead of 75...the more formal legal/medical definitions seem to all use 70 as the cutoff. But those results are known to have some variance too, so you might score 75 one day and 70 the next.
Also relevant to the original point -- note from that first link that there's at least *policies*, if not actual *laws*, that just use a vague "intellectual impairment" metric. So back to the IQ of 80 vs 130 example -- it probably won't get anyone thrown in prison yet, but it could potentially get them fired or kicked out of school if the wrong person decided they had a problem with it. IQ isn't everything, but at least it's a quantitative metric. And I don't think comparing across countries is entirely valid for this either...whatever metrics are used ought to include some compotent of social and cultural understanding, since this is ultimately about a person's ability to understand and consent to certain types of social interaction. So I don't see why it would be surprising that different cultures might need to use different metrics to try to measure that. And yes, I know that's not what IQ is supposed to measure, but I'm not sure that it's even possible to design a test that doesn't indirectly measure oen's familiarity with the testing procedure itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:44PM
Manipulation is still not pedophilia. Even if the child being manipulated is under 10. Considering 14 y/o is not prepubescent, I still only see scare/hate mongering in the media’s penchant in using the term incorrectly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:48PM
There's this idea that most adults are good at long-term thinking, but they aren't; they're only marginally better at it than children. As such, it's easily possible to "manipulate" adults as well, and it happens quite often. I would imagine that adults who are drunk, high, sleepy, or suffering from emotional turmoil would be easier to manipulate, yet I don't think most people would be so quick to say that it would inherently be rape to have sex with such people. And how do you even determine what is and is not "manipulation"?
That's really the problem with laws that fail to take individual circumstances into account. Instead of investigating to see if there was consent like we would do if it was a case that involved adults, our current laws just determine that there can be no real consent if someone is under a certain age. You know, because children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @10:36AM
Looks like Facebook is up [outage.report] again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @04:35PM
Amusing, but NSFW due to language: video [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:49PM (1 child)
Ten years ago the idea that running a poll asking is child molesters were worthy of the banhammer would have been so pointless that nobody would have thought to even ask the question. So now they are asking the question, it is reasonable to assume at least some at FaceBook are at least uncertain enough of the outcome to think the question worth asking. Meaning the bar has been lowered. And it will continue being lowered until they finally ask the question and get the "right" answer. Or until James Cameron raises the bar again. (South Park ep 1609)
They first normalized random sex hookup culture. Then homosexuality and transgenderism. But deviancy has to constantly be defined down so normalizing sex with children or animals has to come next. Looks like the kids are screwed and the animals will have to wait their turn.
They have all the prerequisites in place so the Conservatives will quickly retreat, as they always do; look how fast National Review went gay when $current_year advanced over their old position. The bedrock that would have prevented it has been gone for decades, age of consent. Used to be anyone under the line was unable to give consent, so game over. No argument, no matter how much they wanted it, poke em and it is statutory rape and you go directly to jail and do not collect $200. But so slowly nobody important raised enough ruckus we slowly got to where we are now, where an 18yo virgin is a punch line to a joke. Now kids are simply going to have sex with one another so if we we don't pass our bowls of condoms at the prom we are irresponsible and contributing to teen pregnancy and disease. So teens can consent, but only with other teens. Is that a defensible line? Of course not.
Then we got stories of female teachers and male students. First ones the teacher went to prison but now it just "lucky boy!" So a lesbian teachers goes for a girl and plays the homophobia card when caught, game over of course. And NAMBLA has been "explaining" for decades how straights simply can't understand the importance of the "mentoring" a confused gay teen gets from a relationship with an older gay man. So those cases will soon be a nightly feature in the news until it too becomes normalized. So that covers three of the possible combinations, leaving the final one, the one this whole effort is all about, dirty old men getting the young poon they crave. This ain't over until Roman Polanski comes home to the hero's welcome Hollywierd thinks he deserves. It isn't a pervert, just ahead of his time.
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Friday March 09 2018, @11:55PM
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy