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Comment by fromthegut | Hacker News Reader

Black Mirror. S3 E3

Bit different imo. If some scammer sends me my bro's penile pic, I'm gonna delete it and warn him. If the scammer sends me proof he was consuming illegal, immoral CSAM, I'm having a vastly different reaction.

The shame is the key to this scam. The intersection of (especially teenaged) insecurity, and America cultures nonsensical relationship to sex and shame, is tragic.

That's arguably kind of a weak twist ending to that episode; it would actually basically still work if the material had been inoffensive. Throughout the episode, the viewer is meant to _assume_ it's just shame.

Agreed. I don't really know why I thought the distinction mattered yesterday.

Yes, this is maybe something that is true that we can tell victims of this scam/attack: If I get an anonymous mail with a picture of any sort, I'm not going to look at it. No matter what they say it is. This goes for other platforms too.

There are fortunately few ways for random strangers to cram images I don't want to see into my eyes. Most of the ones that do exist (e.g. making a social media profile and trying to "add" me) are automatically scanned for porn by the social network site.

Teenage boys won't necessarily know the distinction between what's shameful and what's illegal, or the bigger political beliefs around CSAM. Don't you think you're perpetuating the fear of sexuality by effectively threating to cause serious harm to teenagers for looking at the wrong kinds of pictures? Why is there such a binary classification of "no shame" and "calling the cops"? Different countries' laws put that distinction in different places. Remember this could be a minor himself who hasn't actually done any harm to anyone.

I don't think you should've been downvoted, I reread my comment last night and realized I didn't make it as clear.

I mentioned that shame (of sexuality/nudity/vulgarity) as a contrast to fear of being caught doing something illegal, because I think we should work to remove that shame. Or at least that magnitude of it.

I have my own relationship and journey with this American-puritanical bs shame. Life's short, lots of people are horny, no one really cares about your junk that much anyway. But yeah, I didn't have any of that perspective as a teenager.

I kind of agree with the shame thing. It is a problem and puts people at risk of this sort of extortion. On the other hand, what's the alternative? Without shame or laws, would we end up with a lot of public exhibitionism? Would that be fine because nobody has any strong feelings about it? If society became like that, would it devalue sex and reduce many people's enjoyment of it? I suppose one advantage is that sexual abuse of children would be nearly impossible by definition, and in practice because those children would themselves already be desensitized to it. Perhaps this is one of those difficult areas where personal freedom impacts general long term wellbeing of society in a subtle and vague way.

UK and US: "All porn (copyrights) belongs to us"

also UK and US: "We don't even wank to it"

The shame of cheating / adultery is a massive leverage point these scammers prey on.

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