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RE: Steemit Pedophile Ring Exposed
Well thought out an level headed comment. You have a point. Hopefully more people read this. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reflect on my stance with rational insight.
Thanks. I was all ready to take it at face value but something about the claim that it was a "child sex ring" made me go and check to see just how bad it was. After all it would be unlikely I figured that those known for their secrecy would choose to make an ultra open and public platform like Steemit their home and use very busy public tags at that. It actually took me a number of posts to find some potentially problematic images as initially all I clicked on was obviously regular porn.
The mother in the linked post saying they'd just seen this child porn really got me suspicious since they said they don't want their 14 year old son seeing it.... which doesn't make the least bit of sense to say unless the images in question were of a substantially more serious nature. It does on the other hand make sense to say for a sensitive sheltered conservative mother that will quickly call almost everything "child porn" even if it's perfectly legal and is outraged at finding porn itself being on steemit that their 14 year old son might find. (could it be that she saw it because it had the photography tag?)
The cited image was hardly the sort you'd worry about 14 year old boys looking at. In fact the images for the most part aren't even the problem, it's what they imply that's the problem. If a photograph or video is only sexual by someone putting in that context, then it's not the photo or video that's sexual. In other words, if you take pictures of your newborn baby that's not child porn even if they're naked.
The photo claimed to be "proof" is technically NOT EVEN PORN much less child porn.
Someone with lots of creepy NON-pornographic pictures of underage teens and children may POINT to a crime. They can potentially aid an investigation and gain authorisation for further action, but the photo itself doesn't suddenly become child porn because someone gets off on them. You aren't looking at child porn if someone grabs a school photo you also own and posts about how the girl has nice tits or something.
To me this thread was either caused by an attitude of anti-porn "won't someone think of the children!!", or it's someone trying to get that sweet steem dollar by seeing an opportunity to capitalise on outrage and accuse a lot of people of a very serious thing
Neither options are good for different reasons. :/
Yes you definitely make valid arguments. Accusing someone of being in a child sex ring is a very serious thing. I believe the best course of action is to flag content that you believe to be harmful - In this case, the content believed to be "child porn" and to let the proper channels take care of the issue.
That being said, the page in question did have several photos of what seemed to be underage voyeurism. Something I find to be unacceptable.
It seems like everyone is posting valid concerns and can learn from what each other has to say through a logical and tamed discourse.
I think this post is more harmful than the perverted posts by @iamgod. I agree with you his posts are unacceptable just because of the comments which do seem to endorse paedophilia. Still, a post accusing anybody who upvoted or followed as being potentially part of some "ring". I fucking hate sensationism. This post has freaked people unnecessarily.
Not only has it freaked people unnecessarily, it has created victims that most likely had no bad intentions. Nobody is judge jury and executioner. You see people spamming their page and telling them to get therapy because they are endorsing "child pornography". This is actually insane.
Are they a body of authority who has the right to make such accusations?
Their thorough investigation of seeing who upvoted is somehow enough to accuse them of being part of a "child sex ring". ?
And they are somehow in a position to recommend they seek mental help now too?
These are serious accusations with serious implications. Sensationalism for the sake of one's own profit, or adhering to the script of their personal agenda is disgusting.
Absolutely, I pointed that out. The OP I suspect didn't even bother to look further than that one image before he cracked his knuckles and typed out a tabloid shock piece. Otherwise he wouldn't have claimed the "proof" to be something which absolutely wouldn't be if that is all it was. That's what's so frustrating, something real hijacked by someone who seems as if they saw $$$ raining down from heaven with the opportunity that he could post about "exposing" a "child sex ring".
What's even more unconscionable is that in order to support this "child sex ring" he implicated all the followers and it seems people have just assumed they're all pedos as if they've forgotten how Steemit works. It just shows how easily manipulated people are if they accept someones initial premise.
Thats why we're all sheep... tug at a heart string, or better yet at a fear and all of a sudden you control the masses. What a shame.
Clearly this guy's is doing it for some easy bucks - He won't back down even if he realizes he was being irrational.
No matter how irrational you think the accusations are, the way I see it is a call for solidarity against something that we like-minded-people who find child porn (or even porn on Steemit platform) is offending.
If you don't agree with that, then thats your business. That doesnt mean you can call the rest of us sheep or wrong just because we believe otherwise.
Perhaps I could have chosen my words more carefully. However I didn't exclude myself from the sheep comment.
I am just trying to say, that people need to go over their response in a rational matter before they act.
Publicly accusing someone of being involved in child pornography is a very serious matter and it is a matter for an authoritative body. Not one blogger starting a sensationalist witch Hunt.
Furthermore, accusing the people who follow them, and the people who upvoted the post of the same thing is even worse.
There is no evidence asides from personal judgement that the person in question is under age.
There is no evidence that the people who upvoted even saw the post.
There is also the question of why?
These people all made blogs in hopes of providing content that allows them to be profitable. Why on gods little green earth would they publicly endorse this content? They are very much aware that their name becomes linked to this content by upvoting. The motive here is just not there.
Anyways, I just hope people realize how serious some of their actions are, before allowing an emotional response to guide their behavior without taking a moment to think rationally.
Thank you for your response.
Being rational is important of course but being aware is important as well.
This platform has thousands if not tens of thousands of people posting. I am new here and I know that I tend to follow people without checking their content.
If for nothing else, reading this post made me understand that I need to be more vigilant in my choice to who I follow and upvote. There are plenty of people that shares amazing posts, pictures, art and other stuff. why on earth, those 4 chose to upvote these pictures that could easily be identified as type of "porn" even if it was not child porn?
The reasons could be:
1- They don't know what they voted. In this case I say, why you waste your vote power (which we all know its valuable) on something you don't know?
In this case, I invite those accused to come fourth and state what they thought to build trust with the rest of us again (if they want)
2- They know what they voted and wanted to vote it. In this case I can conclude that they support/encourage these types of posts. Something other steemians don't agree with, especially that the contents are plagiarized and there are many other contents that are worth noticing and voting for.
I do hope as well that people realize how serious some of their actions are. As bad as it may sound the accusations made. I find it equally bad upvoting posts with shady or unacceptable contents, even if the upvote was for an "OK" content as @therealwolf stated.
I understand that none of you or us want to be accused of a serious issue without proof. But as far as I see, they could have chosen to stay clear from such contents like many other steemians probably did.
Some people like naked photos - they saw a bum and they voted. I digress that they spent more than a second examining the photo and thinking that there is a chance that the person is underage. Partly being because child pornography is not just frowned upon by the general public, but it is highly illegal. Most people wouldn't allude to the potential that it could be child pornography.
Creating a post about this person, was probably not a bad idea, because his other content actually had voyeuristic but not pornographic photos of clearly underaged people.
However the photograph in question, does not provide evidence that this is child porn - NSFW is accepted on steemit, just because you don't like it doesn't mean others feel the same way; I have no feelings for or against it.
Creating victims of the followers of this person, especially in the absence of evidence is just plain wrong. Go see the lone wolfs page and see how he is getting harassed for no reason.
I argue that more harm came off this article, than the article in question. Bullying, public slander, harrassment and very serious unfounded accusations in the absence of any evidence aside from opinion.
Joining in solidarity is a beautiful thing. But you must know what the people you are joining are doing. You must know exactly why you are joining - emotions aside. This did not happen today.
Nice work edb1984. I'm sure many of the flaggers were afraid to actually check what they were flagging (not that it wasn't worth flagging - it is perverted enough to be flagged). I was afraid to look but all I saw was a girl whose age is questionable but could easily be 18+ photographed nude, then a bunch of clothed girls with perverted comments on their appearances.
Not even porn.
With some you can see nipples through the shirt but that's something anybody can see at the beach on children of all ages. Why criminalise people who happened to be on the beach?!
Personally I don't even call naked pictures porn. Whether something is considered erotic or not is subjective but we don't use that word to describe the sculptures of Ancient Greece.
The guy posting does seem to be endorsing paedophilia with his crude comments, whether he be a paedophile or not. (Most of his posts are pornographic with consenting adults) So we can say there is an issue that somebody would be so shameless, but really it's not our problem and it's not a paedophile ring. I would question the people who leaked these photos onto the internet, but that's because I'm old fashioned and still hate the facebook nature of the world where people freely post pictures of their children nowadays and their friends without prior permission. Pornographic or not, I still resent that norm.
This post was pure sensationalism and I've flagged for overpaying a post of radical accusational nature. Thank you edb1984 for disclosing this. I was genuinely afraid to look for fear of seeing a child being raped!