Onlyfans/Meta terror conspiracy

[Sebastian Cobb]

This seems wild, there's some lawsuits going about accusing Onlyfans of bribing Meta employees to fraudulently add a load of porn stars and sex workers to terror-lists to get their content booted from mainstream platforms. So they can position themselves as the safe haven for that sort of thing.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/09/onlyfans-bribed-meta-to-put-thousands-of-porn-stars-on-terror-watchlist-suits-claim/

I realise we've had a few threads discussing the overall merits of this sort of thing and the potential problems of parasocial relationships blah blah, but this is nuts.

[Ferris]

Hang on, Facebook employees have the ability to put you on a terror watch list?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Hang on, Facebook employees have the ability to put you on a terror watch list?

Watch list might be putting it a bit strongly, it's more for multiple social networks to filter out content matching hashes so it's not displayed rather than you getting SWATTED. I assume it works in more-or-less the same way shared hash-databases of CSAM (child porn) work, but for terror material. Although in the CSAM case other things like collection of identifiable information and reporting almost certainly happen.

[TrenterPercenter]

So why terror and sex crimes?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Why are there filtering databases for these? Probably because there's a fairly well-agreed international opinion that these things are bad and what constitutes them. Much more difficult to do that with general "permissible" speech.

If this and how big tech generally fails at content moderation at scale and the ramifications of that interest you, I recommend this book: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Jillian-C-York/Silicon-Values--The-Future-of-Free-Speech-Under-Surveillance-Capitalism/26703622

[Zero Gravitas]

Weird, I'd always been under the impression that pornographers were pretty moral people.

[Zetetic]

On specifically why "terror", I think it's because GIFCT's hash sharing database has very little oversight by default - you can submit hashes entirely anonymously (if I understand correctly) if you're a GIFCT member and it's up to other members whether they bother to review (and feedback regarding) any matches they encounter (and it's not clear what impact the feedback has anyway).

It seems perfectly designed for this sort of scheme (whether or not this scheme is real).

[Zetetic]

By contrast, if you flag something as CSAM, then law enforcement etc. is going to want a copy of the material and to know more about its provenance. (Edit: As Seb notes above.)

[bgmnts]

Considering presumably a shitload of OnlyFans content creators are desperate people just trying to make ends meet due to being so relentlessly fucked by economic conditions, this is beyond sinister and shit.

Everything just works in tandem.

[Jittlebags]

That would be a pop-shot and a half if it got you onto a Terror List.