[ktownsend]

Sorry if this is too long form for HN, but if you read the article you clearly have some patience as well.

I'm surprised all the comments here seem to be solely around the technical details with blockchain and crypto. It's HN, I get the technical bent and find it interesting as well, but the human side of this one is pretty rough, and it made me appreciate that there are people -- likely sorely underpaid relative to what they'd make elsewhere -- following these (sordid) threads, often at significant emotional cost to themselves.

I did appreciate the odd bits of relief like 'Bitcoin Jesus' and 'Octopus Guy':

> At one point Faruqui remembers a German official asking him, as they stood in the cold outside the Seoul hotel where they were staying, how the Americans had gotten the Koreans on board so quickly. “Oh, Octopus Guy,” Faruqui had explained. “You don’t have Octopus Guy. We have Octopus Guy.”

But mostly, humor aside, it made me wonder for the 1000th time if I'm making the right career and life choices myself in a comfy, well paid job where I'm probably near the top of the pyramid in terms of professional respect, working on problems that I think have reach and import in my narrow speciality ... but am I really solving the problems that matter? I'm not in advertising (thank whatever god you imagine), more in security lately, so the work isn't meaningless ... but I work with some brilliant people whose technical capacities I admire, and I wonder what would happen if a bit more of that gray matter was directed at solving some of the terrible problems described here?

So much money is invested in understanding the psychology of how to force better engagement and squeeze out every last penny of hapless consumers in whatever social network. What would happen if a fraction of that went into trying to focus on influencing the people making these awful, life-destroying choices and somehow (re)sensitizing them to the costs of their actions and navigating them away from that preventatively, even if the success rate is only 1-2 percent? Or identifying victims of abuse through posting patterns to try to make sure they're potentially being flagged to receive content and help they may not be able to believe even exists? How much is invested in psychological profiling to maximize profit for the most banal advertising ends, when maybe for once some of that gray matter making those algorithms could do something positive identifying patterns indicative of abuse, beyond just the current simple fig leaf approach to pretend the owners of your social network of choice cares about your well being.

I'd love to do better, and I'd take a decent pay cut if I felt I could do something for that, and maybe even get to feel a bit better as a person in this weird world as a side effect. Seems like we not only should but could do a lot more here, before this gets to the criminal investigation level.

[wmf]

FAANGs all have child safety departments where you can get paid and do good.

[FireBeyond]

I have to feel that on some level, actively seeking out jobs where you review CSAM on a daily basis should be at least something of a red flag to those employers.