I've once spotted a (Latin American) slave trader on a image sharing platform during a technical due diligence. They were pretty shameless about it too, uploading the photos of the girls from their own IP. All the easier for the authorities to go after them.
Please take careful note: If you do not do proper risk analysis of your platform you WILL be used to perpetrate crime and if you find that you did not do what you could have done to stop it you may end up being an accessory to that crime. More so if you ignore warnings or flags by other users of the platform. This goes for anything that allows the uploading and further distribution of user generated content (especially 1-1) and for anything that deals with money.
Your nifty platform or weekend project could easily become the vehicle for someone else's crimes.
> Please take careful note: If you do not do proper risk analysis of your platform you WILL be used to perpetrate crime and if you find that you did not do what you could have done to stop it you may end up being an accessory to that crime.
Since we're talking about image hosters (I built one some years ago): how do you solve the dilemma that a) you can be sure that at some point somebody will upload images that are illegal to host and look at, b) in order to identify and remove them you'll have to look at them or pay someone to look at them.
What we did (before ML became widely available/easily usable, not sure if there are ready-to-use models for filtering all illegal images out there these days - nobody would want to train one themselves using illegal content...) was to look at access logs and remove all images that had suspicious hostnames in the "Referer" header. It wasn't enough apparently, it got my successor into trouble and a new dilemma (take down the platform immediately, or operate it as a honeypot to help authorities who asked for it, potentially incriminating themselves for not taking down illegal content after being made aware of it... [police can't give you a carte blanche for operating a honeypot, a DA/prosecutor can still prosecute]).
> Your nifty platform or weekend project could easily become the vehicle for someone else's crimes.
We might as well all pack up and go home then. God forbid some group coordinates an atrocity using the comments section of our blog, for want of proper risk analysis.
Best leave it all to the oligarchs. They know what they're doing. They'll look after us.
Regardless of what the actual situation is, I wonder what people think it should be, and how far towards either direction (anarchy and whatever the opposite is) we'll go.
For example, What if you sell someone some pencils and they stab someone to death with them?
If I run a forum about gardening and someone is using the PMs as a slave market, am I responsible for not monitoring every single message on the platform, and should I be?
What if I own an office and I rent it out for people to have meetings, and they meet there in person and hold a slave market, am I also supposed to be monitoring their in-person meetings?
That’s one of the many reasons I don’t implement a bunch of my side projects, because it inevitably leads to me trying to figure out how to police and remove gross content from whatever website I build, and I don’t want to have to deal with that.
That seems a bit harsh. If I own a building and somebody sprays an antisemitic or jihadist message on its wall, am I now complicit for spreading racial hatred (assuming in Europe, in US it's probably protected by constitution)?
I know the article focuses a lot on Instagram/Android/iOS, but the underlying story is utterly ridiculous. This isn't a small group of criminal gangs who are doing this. It's the middle class and upper class of a first world nation, who are literally recreating slavery in the 21st century.
I don't understand how this isn't being cracked down in the harshest manner - no normal person would risk doing it if they faced 10-20 years imprisonment for human trafficking. Simply pass a law that all domestic workers have to report to a police station for 5 minutes every Sunday, alone, during which time they will be asked if they are being held against their will. This would likely eliminate the vast majority of human trafficking currently happening over there. It blows my mind that the government is doing so little about something so abhorrent.
“Under what is known as the Kafala system, a domestic worker cannot change or quit her job, nor leave the country without her sponsor's permission.”
That doesn’t sound like the a law that is intended to prevent slavery like conditions for domestic workers. And very much encourage abuse in general and confiscating passports specifically (can’t leave the country without the sponsor’s permission sounds like a pretty implied permission to take someone’s passport).
While I absolutely agree that this needs to be crackef and every perpetrator personally punished, let's not forget that this is undercover also happening in other countries. Blood farms in India (look it up, horrifying), brick kilns in Pakistan where entire families are enslaved for generations, labour and disappearance camps in China and many forms of illegal slavery even in Europe, America, Australia, ...
Romanians in slave-like conditions on Italian farms, African refugees and economic migrants enslaved in North Africa and Spain, Mexicans and trafficked people in slave conditions across the US, forced prostitution in America, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Canada, ... - of locals and foreigners alike. I've heard thanks to the refugee influx you can get a prostitute in Athens for 10€. And all this nightmare is not even counting all the 'arranged marriages' between 12 year old girls and 62 year old 'husbands'.
This is a human problem, and one that far too few resources are spent on. Child abuse gets much attention but factually still too few resources (ask the 9 year old Filipina prostituting herself on Skype - although probably she's still better off than her neighbour trafficked to Thailand). But beyond this, even in what you would consider the most developed countries, you still find slaves. Because neighbours don't notice or care. Because the police is understaffed or doesn't care. Because even when they are saved there are no resources to truly save them.
We all close our eyes and ignore these crimes when they happen in broad daylight. If you are anywhere in a big city ANYWHERE there's a good chance you're not far from a slave. We ignore the rampant poverty that leads to all this. We crack down on 'illegal immigrants' and make legal immigration all but impossible - and push the desperate into the hands of real criminals that then abuse them, e.g. by stuffing them in a sealed container in which they freeze and suffocate to death on their way to their enslavement in the UK.
'Frre the Slaves' estimates that, in absolute numbers, there are more slaves today in the world than at any point in history.
Don't ask me how to resolve this. I just know that somehow we are all complicit.
>>>This isn't a small group of criminal gangs who are doing this. It's the middle class and upper class of a first world nation, who are literally recreating slavery in the 21st century.
>>>I don't understand how this isn't being cracked down in the harshest manner
Your second paragraph's question is answered in your own first paragraph. The power structure in the country isn't going to undermine a system that it directly benefits from. Especially given the culture in that part of the world, that has a very non-Western perspective on things like "submission" and "human rights"....
Well it's condoned by a major world religion and most of the countries that espouse that religion. Good luck changing the opinions of a billion people.
> "What they are doing is promoting an online slave market," said Urmila Bhoola, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery.
> "If Google, Apple, Facebook or any other companies are hosting apps like these, they have to be held accountable."
Of course we don't want social media enabling that. But the bad guys are the people who are keeping others as slaves, and the law enforcement that turn a blind eye. The solution isn't to take down the posts, but to alert law enforcement.
These governments should be urged to find and arrest the people who are doing this, otherwise it won't stop even if blocked. A single dev could mock up a replacement, "like craigslist, but for slaves".
Why can these apps block "breaking copyright" and discussions about piratebay, but cant stop slave trade?
Why does the justice system hand out huge fines and prison sentances, for copyright infrigiment, but not for slavery?
Why does the US and its lobby organizations, threaten another democratic state with "consequences" (see piratebay raid) for copyright infrigiment. Yet no one bats an eye at this.
But seemingly, you educated person of HN, cant think of a method or reason for trying to stop slavery. Oh yeah.
> Of course we don't want social media enabling that.
Eliding that it not only "enables" it in a binary way, but also "enables" it in a that creates exponential reach and growth of the market. This explosive mechanic is one of the things implies by the phrase, "tech boom." Your response reduces social media's role to a one-sentence hand-wave.
> The solution isn't to take down the posts, but to alert law enforcement.
Is your point that you can't do the latter if you do the former? Because that's not the case in any way.
> These governments should be urged to find and arrest the people who are doing this, otherwise it won't stop even if blocked.
You're _technically_ right in the very narrow sense that there will likely still be some kind of market for chattel slavery even without Instagram. But again you are minimizing Instagram's (I'm using Instagram as a stand-in for all the companies involved) role and responsibilities in this situation for some reason.
When we talk about these companies we use phrasing like, "huge tech platforms," "tech giants," etc. To my mind you are defending these "tech behemoths" from the very idea of public accountability.
The response to the question you raise of government & law enforcement enforcing the law is so obvious it barely merits response, but: yes, obviously the government should govern and law enforcement should enforce the law. Bringing it up at all seems to me like another deflection away from "Instagram"'s responsibilities in governance on & public accountability for their platforms.
> The solution isn't to take down the posts, but to alert law enforcement.
I agree but on the other hand they should play an active role. Not an expert on this one, but speaking about hate related posts on Facebook, they did turn a blind eye on that. That makes me think they don't care about < 1% content that might be a problem.
If they don't play an active role, they are facilitators. Probably in most jurisdictions this makes people guilty as well.
Moreover it gives law&order proponents arguments to just watch literally everyone. And in any case the law enforcements get only aware of a small percentage of crimes happening. Basically they are no more than a crutch to mend torn fabrics of society.
Right! Sites like this and bitcoin could be handing criminals to the authorities on a silver platter. Why are they shutting them down? They should be intentionally creating sites like this as honey pots.
A couple journalists fairly easily find these listing on public platforms - and you're telling me the platforms could not do easily a lot more to capture and report these folks?
This is like blaming a hammer manufacturer for enabling hammer murders. It isn't their intention to make a murder tool, it isn't its primary use, and they don't market it for that purpose. They make a tool, and although that tool will certainly be abused, the benefits outweigh the costs. Same goes for these new communication tools.
I don't know, hardware manufacturers are expected to design and manufacture their stuff with harm prevention in mind. There are tons of regulations intended to prevent not just injuries due to stupidity but also abuses.
If the same goes for the communication tools, maybe we should regulate them too? Software is like the wild west when it comes to regulations and unfortunately, regulations will come because the software developers fail spectacularly to regulate themselves.
Does your software act as a perfect tool for genocide or a decline in the health of a society? You won't be able to stand with straight face counting your money saying "not my problem" simply because a business is supposed to create more value than it takes from the system and if the opposite happens the system will eject that business. Commies will take over, something will happen before people die off for the ideal of the free enterprise. That's why we don't have free organ market.
Anyway, this doesn't mean that Instagram or any other app makers are evil, it simply means that there's a problem that their business enables and some people are asking questions.I hope they don't say "not my problem" because that's how revolts begin, commies take over or guillotines become street attraction.
When I attended F8, Facebook gave a presentation on how sophisticated their drug post detection had gotten. Things like being able to differentiate between a photo of broccoli tempura and weed (that slide can be seen here: https://www.cnet.com/news/marijuana-or-broccoli-facebook-ill...), "candy" being sold at unusual prices, factoring in how networks of people interact with the posts, etc. were highlighted that appeared highly sophisticated, to the point where some examples took hints for the humans in the room to figure out the right answer.
Meanwhile, their only action in this article is apparently banning a hashtag. I'm dubious that that's the best they can do.
That is a dumb analogy. The manufacturer of a hammer cannot control what people do with a hammer. Instagram can control what its users do on Instagram.
No. This is like blaming hammer-as-a-service company for hammer murders.
If you're leasing out equipment, you better have reasonable tracking/prevention mechanisms of your equipment. This is much like tracking car leases, computer leases, apartment leases.
The bigger problem is that it's not a crime to take someone's passport away and prevent them from leaving the country whenever they wish to. None of this would be possible if an employee could quit and go home at any time.
If you are the citizen of a first world country, you can just go to your embassy without any id and they will sort it out.
These workers origin countries also share the blame, they refuse to help them. In many cases they turn a blind eye to this slavery since these enslaved workers send currency to their origin country.
Does anyone honestly think that removing fb out of the equation would result in any kind of improvement? Or are people simply disgusted because this is happening on the service they also happen to be users of?
the problem is jurisdiction, in this case Kuwait, not freaking fb which in a matter of minutes can be replaced for alibaba or tictoc or something else you and bbc journas never heard of
It’s not like this is only happening in private - Shitbook is outright giving them a storefront for selling slaves.
Now I agree that the problem can’t be 100% eliminated as at least some of it happens behind closed doors, but it would sure reduce the scale of this business if Shitbook & co weren’t around to provide a free platform for trading slaves in the open.
They should be prosecuted for complicity and not be allowed to hide behind the excuse of the “algorithm”. If your algorithm isn’t good enough to filter out this behaviour then go back to the drawing board and find a better solution. Human moderation works pretty well on forums. Oh it doesn’t scale? Well that’s a shame but it’s not a right to be profitable - if you can’t figure out a sustainable business model then don’t be in business. It’s like starting a very cheap rental car business and stealing cars for your inventory because you can’t actually afford to buy them...
But it seems to me that accusing Apple/FB/Instagram that those platforms were used for it is exactly the same as accusing Toyota/Nissan/Ford that vehicles they made were used for transporting slaves.
So this is like the business method patent. It is new - it uses a computer! - it is new is uses an app/hashtag!
The system in the gulf has been there for decades. If you weren't outraged five years ago - no reason to be now. If you were - keep the fire burning and try to do something.
As long as the system for abuse is in place, people will communicate with smoke signals if needed to facilitate the involuntarily employment change.
This is why we've turned Facebook and Twitter into political machines. You are blaming the social media companies for enabling slavery. Slavery existed long before the internet, removing it from the internet just means it goes back to working the old fashioned way.
[+] [-] jacquesm|6 years ago|reply
Please take careful note: If you do not do proper risk analysis of your platform you WILL be used to perpetrate crime and if you find that you did not do what you could have done to stop it you may end up being an accessory to that crime. More so if you ignore warnings or flags by other users of the platform. This goes for anything that allows the uploading and further distribution of user generated content (especially 1-1) and for anything that deals with money.
Your nifty platform or weekend project could easily become the vehicle for someone else's crimes.
[+] [-] lazyjones|6 years ago|reply
Since we're talking about image hosters (I built one some years ago): how do you solve the dilemma that a) you can be sure that at some point somebody will upload images that are illegal to host and look at, b) in order to identify and remove them you'll have to look at them or pay someone to look at them.
What we did (before ML became widely available/easily usable, not sure if there are ready-to-use models for filtering all illegal images out there these days - nobody would want to train one themselves using illegal content...) was to look at access logs and remove all images that had suspicious hostnames in the "Referer" header. It wasn't enough apparently, it got my successor into trouble and a new dilemma (take down the platform immediately, or operate it as a honeypot to help authorities who asked for it, potentially incriminating themselves for not taking down illegal content after being made aware of it... [police can't give you a carte blanche for operating a honeypot, a DA/prosecutor can still prosecute]).
Edit: it doesn't seem to be available for my country, but a service like https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-... might help nowadays.
[+] [-] hanoz|6 years ago|reply
We might as well all pack up and go home then. God forbid some group coordinates an atrocity using the comments section of our blog, for want of proper risk analysis.
Best leave it all to the oligarchs. They know what they're doing. They'll look after us.
[+] [-] PostOnce|6 years ago|reply
For example, What if you sell someone some pencils and they stab someone to death with them?
If I run a forum about gardening and someone is using the PMs as a slave market, am I responsible for not monitoring every single message on the platform, and should I be?
What if I own an office and I rent it out for people to have meetings, and they meet there in person and hold a slave market, am I also supposed to be monitoring their in-person meetings?
[+] [-] journalctl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burntoutfire|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digsy|6 years ago|reply
I'm wondering if machine learning could be used for this.
[+] [-] whack|6 years ago|reply
I don't understand how this isn't being cracked down in the harshest manner - no normal person would risk doing it if they faced 10-20 years imprisonment for human trafficking. Simply pass a law that all domestic workers have to report to a police station for 5 minutes every Sunday, alone, during which time they will be asked if they are being held against their will. This would likely eliminate the vast majority of human trafficking currently happening over there. It blows my mind that the government is doing so little about something so abhorrent.
[+] [-] cstejerean|6 years ago|reply
That doesn’t sound like the a law that is intended to prevent slavery like conditions for domestic workers. And very much encourage abuse in general and confiscating passports specifically (can’t leave the country without the sponsor’s permission sounds like a pretty implied permission to take someone’s passport).
[+] [-] pergadad|6 years ago|reply
Romanians in slave-like conditions on Italian farms, African refugees and economic migrants enslaved in North Africa and Spain, Mexicans and trafficked people in slave conditions across the US, forced prostitution in America, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Canada, ... - of locals and foreigners alike. I've heard thanks to the refugee influx you can get a prostitute in Athens for 10€. And all this nightmare is not even counting all the 'arranged marriages' between 12 year old girls and 62 year old 'husbands'.
This is a human problem, and one that far too few resources are spent on. Child abuse gets much attention but factually still too few resources (ask the 9 year old Filipina prostituting herself on Skype - although probably she's still better off than her neighbour trafficked to Thailand). But beyond this, even in what you would consider the most developed countries, you still find slaves. Because neighbours don't notice or care. Because the police is understaffed or doesn't care. Because even when they are saved there are no resources to truly save them.
We all close our eyes and ignore these crimes when they happen in broad daylight. If you are anywhere in a big city ANYWHERE there's a good chance you're not far from a slave. We ignore the rampant poverty that leads to all this. We crack down on 'illegal immigrants' and make legal immigration all but impossible - and push the desperate into the hands of real criminals that then abuse them, e.g. by stuffing them in a sealed container in which they freeze and suffocate to death on their way to their enslavement in the UK.
'Frre the Slaves' estimates that, in absolute numbers, there are more slaves today in the world than at any point in history.
Don't ask me how to resolve this. I just know that somehow we are all complicit.
[+] [-] CapricornNoble|6 years ago|reply
>>>I don't understand how this isn't being cracked down in the harshest manner
Your second paragraph's question is answered in your own first paragraph. The power structure in the country isn't going to undermine a system that it directly benefits from. Especially given the culture in that part of the world, that has a very non-Western perspective on things like "submission" and "human rights"....
[+] [-] djohnston|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikeb85|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imhoguy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway-hn123|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aristophenes|6 years ago|reply
Of course we don't want social media enabling that. But the bad guys are the people who are keeping others as slaves, and the law enforcement that turn a blind eye. The solution isn't to take down the posts, but to alert law enforcement.
These governments should be urged to find and arrest the people who are doing this, otherwise it won't stop even if blocked. A single dev could mock up a replacement, "like craigslist, but for slaves".
[+] [-] antocv|6 years ago|reply
Why does the justice system hand out huge fines and prison sentances, for copyright infrigiment, but not for slavery?
Why does the US and its lobby organizations, threaten another democratic state with "consequences" (see piratebay raid) for copyright infrigiment. Yet no one bats an eye at this.
But seemingly, you educated person of HN, cant think of a method or reason for trying to stop slavery. Oh yeah.
[+] [-] modwest|6 years ago|reply
Eliding that it not only "enables" it in a binary way, but also "enables" it in a that creates exponential reach and growth of the market. This explosive mechanic is one of the things implies by the phrase, "tech boom." Your response reduces social media's role to a one-sentence hand-wave.
> The solution isn't to take down the posts, but to alert law enforcement.
Is your point that you can't do the latter if you do the former? Because that's not the case in any way.
> These governments should be urged to find and arrest the people who are doing this, otherwise it won't stop even if blocked.
You're _technically_ right in the very narrow sense that there will likely still be some kind of market for chattel slavery even without Instagram. But again you are minimizing Instagram's (I'm using Instagram as a stand-in for all the companies involved) role and responsibilities in this situation for some reason.
When we talk about these companies we use phrasing like, "huge tech platforms," "tech giants," etc. To my mind you are defending these "tech behemoths" from the very idea of public accountability.
The response to the question you raise of government & law enforcement enforcing the law is so obvious it barely merits response, but: yes, obviously the government should govern and law enforcement should enforce the law. Bringing it up at all seems to me like another deflection away from "Instagram"'s responsibilities in governance on & public accountability for their platforms.
[+] [-] blablabla123|6 years ago|reply
I agree but on the other hand they should play an active role. Not an expert on this one, but speaking about hate related posts on Facebook, they did turn a blind eye on that. That makes me think they don't care about < 1% content that might be a problem.
If they don't play an active role, they are facilitators. Probably in most jurisdictions this makes people guilty as well.
Moreover it gives law&order proponents arguments to just watch literally everyone. And in any case the law enforcements get only aware of a small percentage of crimes happening. Basically they are no more than a crutch to mend torn fabrics of society.
[+] [-] anon1m0us|6 years ago|reply
Would that be entrapment? Catch a predatoresque?
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pergadad|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hirundo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtksn|6 years ago|reply
If the same goes for the communication tools, maybe we should regulate them too? Software is like the wild west when it comes to regulations and unfortunately, regulations will come because the software developers fail spectacularly to regulate themselves.
Does your software act as a perfect tool for genocide or a decline in the health of a society? You won't be able to stand with straight face counting your money saying "not my problem" simply because a business is supposed to create more value than it takes from the system and if the opposite happens the system will eject that business. Commies will take over, something will happen before people die off for the ideal of the free enterprise. That's why we don't have free organ market.
Anyway, this doesn't mean that Instagram or any other app makers are evil, it simply means that there's a problem that their business enables and some people are asking questions.I hope they don't say "not my problem" because that's how revolts begin, commies take over or guillotines become street attraction.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|6 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, their only action in this article is apparently banning a hashtag. I'm dubious that that's the best they can do.
[+] [-] tw04|6 years ago|reply
Instagram obviously can't single-handedly prevent things like slavery, but they can absolutely police their platform to try to stop it.
[+] [-] Razengan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NTDF9|6 years ago|reply
If you're leasing out equipment, you better have reasonable tracking/prevention mechanisms of your equipment. This is much like tracking car leases, computer leases, apartment leases.
[+] [-] diryawish|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mullingitover|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heyyyouu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackernewl|6 years ago|reply
These workers origin countries also share the blame, they refuse to help them. In many cases they turn a blind eye to this slavery since these enslaved workers send currency to their origin country.
[+] [-] ethanpil|6 years ago|reply
Just Google "خادمات للتنازل" and you will find these ads on Twitter, Pintrest and lots of dedicated sites. :(
[+] [-] AzzieElbab|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AzzieElbab|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nextgrid|6 years ago|reply
Now I agree that the problem can’t be 100% eliminated as at least some of it happens behind closed doors, but it would sure reduce the scale of this business if Shitbook & co weren’t around to provide a free platform for trading slaves in the open.
They should be prosecuted for complicity and not be allowed to hide behind the excuse of the “algorithm”. If your algorithm isn’t good enough to filter out this behaviour then go back to the drawing board and find a better solution. Human moderation works pretty well on forums. Oh it doesn’t scale? Well that’s a shame but it’s not a right to be profitable - if you can’t figure out a sustainable business model then don’t be in business. It’s like starting a very cheap rental car business and stealing cars for your inventory because you can’t actually afford to buy them...
[+] [-] modwest|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] REDDitMen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcbw3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _wqwa|6 years ago|reply
But it seems to me that accusing Apple/FB/Instagram that those platforms were used for it is exactly the same as accusing Toyota/Nissan/Ford that vehicles they made were used for transporting slaves.
[+] [-] TheMinorityGuy|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] anm89|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] marcos123|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ReptileMan|6 years ago|reply
The system in the gulf has been there for decades. If you weren't outraged five years ago - no reason to be now. If you were - keep the fire burning and try to do something.
As long as the system for abuse is in place, people will communicate with smoke signals if needed to facilitate the involuntarily employment change.
[+] [-] jbob2000|6 years ago|reply