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0 pointsjsmthrowaway9y ago0 comments

Those Chen articles hit close to home when I read them, because I've had to verify and act on child pornography complaints at a hosting service. Almost eight years later, I still have nightmares about the (thankfully) little I've seen. When I got into hosting I didn't realize dealing with stuff like that is table stakes; that was my first, and last, hosting employment, but I'll carry that aspect until I die.

That experience really makes me feel bad for the 3,000 new hires, honestly. I couldn't imagine moderating the human condition, which one could argue Facebook basically is. They'd better not clean out Adecco, and actually pay those people with the long-term damage of the job in mind, but that won't happen. Would actually make for a good union...

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nikcub9y ago

Completely sympathize. I had an experience in my black hat days - broke into a server and found folder upon folder of JPG's. Stupidly downloaded some of them and opened the first to find an image so disturbing that I can't even begin to describe it.

We were a bit conflicted about what to do (more how to do it), and ended up reporting it to both the US and Australian feds (which I suspect may have given me a free pass on one of the crazier things I later did).

I really didn't take it well, but one of the guys in our group was inspired to start a vigilante group that would hunt these distribution networks down and it achieved some success in the 90s.

Hopefully these employees can be eventually protected with some basic level of ML that would filter out the worst of the worst (apparently Microsoft Research have a well-developed fingerprinting system for child exploitation images) - because i'd really hate to imagine the scenario you and Chen describe, and what I briefly experienced, as becoming more common.

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