Online 'Shaming' A New Level Of Cyberbullying For Girls

Now videos and photos are actually seen by people, without your permission, by your friends, teachers, principals, parents, etc. It would seem to me to only increase the level of trauma. It's one thing to tell your parents that the kids at school said X, it's another to have your parents called and shown a photo or told a video exists.

My girlfriend and I were video tapped in high school, this was around 2003 I want to say, so luckily it wasn't super easily broadcast, but still made the rounds in her high school. Thankfully the acts committed weren't completely revelatory for either of us, but it definitely hurt her greatly. I can only imagine what would have happened had the video shown more, or the audience distribution wider.

What ended up happening was the video destroyed, the student reprimanded. In our case it was friends playing a prank too far, but in many others its done with malicious intent and broadcasted to the greatest number of people to enhance that harm.

I doubt it; the existence of an FBI database of known child abuse photos suggests that long after these images are identified, they continue to be shared online. Given how many amateur porn websites there are, and how older teenagers can easily pass for adults (thus reducing the likelihood that whatever moderators such websites have will reject the photos), it is almost certain that such photos will continue to be available online long after the girls/boys are adults and have forgotten the whole episode.

I think this argument is a red herring, though. The problem as I see it is not what happens when the photos are out there, the problem is that our notion of sex ed still comes out of the 1950s. We teach children about sex when they are old enough that there is a non-trivial probability they already started having sex. We limit sex ed to information about STIs and a reminder to use a condom (but in New York City, we were not actually shown how to apply one).

We need to update our approach to sex ed to reflect the realities of this century. First of all, children should start receiving some amount of sex ed long before they start having sex; clearly it will need to be explained in a way that is age-appropriate, but we cannot continue to put it off. Second, we must include a discussion about modern technology as it relates to sex -- that includes cameras, computers, and the Internet; if we know that teenagers are doing this, we need to explain to them how to be responsible (in the same way that we say, "use a condom because some STIs last forever," we should be saying, "don't let photos or videos be taken, because they last on the Internet forever"). We need to be frank with kids about these issues, or else they are just going to run wild and "learn" from their friends (who will almost always give them bad advice, betray them, or otherwise "do it wrong").

Yes, technology changes things. That is not a surprise. That is not shocking. If we fail to adapt to those changes, we'll just wind up in the same position as the RIAA and MPAA: crying, whining, and pushing for destructive laws.

(Note that this doesn't absolve others of wrongdoing -- it's just an observation of a way people can protect themselves from victimization.)

No, it isn't. It may be difficult, but it isn't impossible. And it would be easier if people were taught that trust is something important that should not be given lightly. It would also help, as has been commented already in this thread, if the people who abuse trust were publicly shamed, instead of the people whose trust they abuse.

And that one party ought to be able to unilaterally force me to take down content?

I understand that this is ok if I'm making a facebook page mocking a 13 year old girl, but what if I'm making a site that parodies a company, or a CEO, or a politician, or Justin Bieber?

This slope is indeed slippery as all fuck.

My worry with holding Facebook responsible or culpable for the actions of its users in this specific regard is that we're creating and or granting a degree of control over interation to Facebook. I don't understand why now, with Facebook, we decide this needs action. The same stuff went on before computers, all Facebook is doing is making this visible to a wider population.

I'm not trying to say Facebook should do nothing. By all means they should just as that convenience store owner report the matter to the proper authorities. Our justice systems are a much better way to punish offenders than a for profit corporation. They may not be perfect but I do not trust Facebook or any corporation to deal with this in a decent way.

The underlying problem here however is society and its views on sex for women. That and how men act and treat women in general. Both of those should be at the top of our list to fix and equalize.

"Moreover, I'd argue that Facebook has a responsibility, as a company that makes a ton of money off these teenagers, that they don't when those teenagers share the same pictures via sneakernet."

Slippery slope: ISPs also make money off teenagers, possibly even more than Facebook (cell services certainly make more than Facebook -- teenagers basically demand SMS and 3G/4G from their parents these days, which has turned enormous profits for the telecom industry). Do you think it is acceptable for ISPs to be policing this sort of thing too? Facebook is a communications service; they should not be in the business of filtering the communications of their users, any more than Comcast or T-Mobile.

Really, there is a bigger picture here. Yes, bullying is a problem, but if the communications systems that teenagers use were to be filtered as a matter of course, that would just train teenagers to believe that they live in a world where communications are always being watched. Is that really what we want the next generation to grow up thinking? Do we really want the next generation of leaders to believe that one of the things people in authority are supposed do is to monitor the communications of those they govern? Do we want to create adults who shrug at the warrantless wiretapping program?

It is not hard to picture, because drug prohibition began a century ago in the USA. Back when drugs were legal here, things like the Industrial Revolution happened. Society was not some kind of pit of despair when drugs were legal; we had problems, sure, but we still have problems today and the drug war has not solved any of the problems we had previously (but it did introduce many of the current ones).

"the sentences doesn't seem quite harsh"

Jail time is a harsh sentence. America is so far to the right these days that we tend to think that putting someone in prison for "only" five years is not harsh.

It is not just about the sentencing. Right now, we have tens of thousands of paramilitary raids on civilian homes each year; property is damaged, dogs are shot, and people are killed. These raids are not reserved for the most dangerous criminals; they are routinely used to serve search and arrest warrants against people who are either unarmed or only lightly armed. Many thousands of innocent bystanders have been killed by the paramilitary teams that carry out these raids, as have many thousands of innocent people whose homes were incorrectly targeted.

Worse still, the very paramilitary forces that carry out these raids are allowed to keep the proceeds from the sales of property seized in the course of their duties for their own department budget. Some police forces have become "self funded" as a result. It is a case-study in slippery slopes.

This has not helped to solve our drug problems. Not only are people still using drugs, but the drugs they are using are causing unnecessary harm. Methamphetamine is not necessarily a destructive drug; it actually has medical uses (as a treatment for narcolepsy, ADHD, and for appetite control), and is sold by the pharmaceutical industry under the name Desoxyn. Yet people who want to use this drug recreationally cannot buy it legally (it is a felony to transfer it to someone who lacks a prescription and a felony to prescribe it unnecessarily) and wind up buying it from black-market sources, receiving a product that was produced under poorly controlled circumstances and which is frequently adulterated with the byproducts and waste from the production process (these cause far more harm than the drug itself; it is these adulterants that give methamphetamine abusers their "sickly" look). Likewise with opiates: heroine is often "cut" in ways that are poorly controlled, and on at least one occasion a black-market opiate dealer sold MPTP, a drug that permanently induces Parkinson's disease, after failing to properly manufacture the opiate MPPP.

So if someone were not on some moral crusade and actually wanted to address the problems society has with drugs -- someone like me -- they would support a complete repeal of the war on drugs and an entirely different approach. We manage to produce and distribute alcohol in a regulated manner. We don't need to throw people in prison, we just need to ensure that people don't kill themselves or anyone else and that if a person needs help, they can get it.