While it may not have been your intent, your response felt dismissive and condescending to me. Additionally, the first paragraph seems to engage in whataboutism. Which, should it be the case, doesn’t serve the point you are trying to make.
I will however grant you the benefit of the doubt and engage further.
For you, child abuse might be an abstract concept. To me, it is gut-wrenching memories. I would have spared you the details, but it seems you prefer everything to be spelled out for you. So here it is.
I grew up in a country where impoverished families in rural areas often send their children to the city, supposedly to attend school. Instead of being educated or taken care of, many of these children are sent to beg on the streets, to bring back money, only to be beaten and starved until they meet their quotas. Some are raped. Some run away.
Of those who run away, some return home. When they do, their families often send them back, either because they don’t believe their stories, refuse to believe them, or simply cannot afford to keep them.
Those who don’t return end up living on the streets on their own, forming bands of children begging, stealing, and proudly telling you how they’re the ones buying the solvent to sniff for the group.
Despite witnessing this firsthand, I can only imagine that the full horror of it is far worse than I will ever understand.
To top it all, when I came back years to visit some friends I learned from social workers actually trying to get these children off the street that as they grow up some of the older kids actually often start raping the younger ones.
So, you see, I really could have been spared the lecture.
These experiences shape my deep concerns about the impacts of absolute anonymity and privacy. While I instinctively value these principles, actually understanding real-world implications make it difficult to hold them above all else without question.
There is a significant gap in our experiences. While I am glad many have no first or second hand knowledge on any of these topics, this gap might make it challenging for the two of us to have, on this topic, the fully rational discussion you appear to want.
Ironically, this difficulty perfectly underscores my point: while privacy and freedom of expression are crucial, some experiences compel me to question how we balance these ideals with the need to prevent harm.
Now, onto the censorship of evidence issue.
First, I fail to grasp how exposing unwitting people to this kind of content would, in any way, help find abusers. Your Vietnam war example might have been valid, arguably, if public awareness on the issue of child pornography needed to be raised. If, like during the Vietnam war, public opinion was divided on the topic. Thankfully, it isn’t.
Second, moderating such content doesn’t mean it couldn’t or shouldn’t reported to law enforcement. Such systems already exist. They have their faults [0], but they exist.
> see, it’s much easier to have a rational discussion when you spell out your position instead of relying on winks and nudges
I assumed the issue was clear and didn’t want to force explicit details onto unwitting readers. I will not apologise for that.
it sounds like this issue is enormously more of an abstract concept to you than it is for me, which may be why you're more interested in whether a proposed policy such as limitations on anonymous communication will result in you seeing pictures of child abuse than whether it will cause child abuse. because i have a lot more knowledge of the issue than you do, i don't want the policies you favor, because, as i said in my previous comment, they perpetuate the abuse and protect the abusers more than the victims
my vietnam war example wasn't some kind of analogy or metaphor. it was, literally, a photo of a naked child being horribly abused. at the time, publishing it was legal, although plausibly today it wouldn't be; if i recall correctly, wikipedia has been blocked in various countries for containing that picture, and it has been blocked on facebook: https://breakingnewsenglish.com/1609/160909-napalm-girl-phot.... public opinion was not in fact divided on the topic of horribly abusing children; it was simply uninformed about who was doing it and how to impede them. you are similarly uninformed today
but you already have enough information to understand that you are in the wrong. when you opened that page, why did you just close it? why didn't you send those pictures to the police, to investigative journalists, or to a private investigator? unlike the http web, freenet was protecting you by ensuring that whoever uploaded the pictures to freenet (probably the abuser) didn't have your ip address or any other way to figure out who reported them. perhaps you made that decision because you're living in a legal regime which penalizes their mere possession. but when you did, you personally became complicit in perpetuating that abuse, in order to comply with the very censorship regime you are defending
and that is the general pattern of how censorship relates to abuse
here's another photo of an abused five-year-old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State#/media/File:N... more accurately, it's a photo of all that was left of her after the abuse. this kind of abuse continued for years in the congo free state, only stopping when foreigners with diplomatic immunity were able to visit, document it, and force the king himself to give up the colony where he had institutionalized such abuses. if the congolese had had access to freenet, it would have stopped years earlier
and that is why right now journalists and other people in the gaza strip are being killed when they try to get internet access to share the news of what is happening there. even the un high committee for refugees complains that its own workers there are unable to communicate reliably. even today, systems like freenet remain marginal and relatively ineffective, and mass human rights atrocities—including sexual and even worse abuse of children—is the predictable result of that situation
> it sounds like this issue is enormously more of an abstract concept to you than it is for me
Maybe. On the off chance you may have some first hand experience with these topics, I would be inclined to believe you.
However, considering the standard for transparency you yourself have set earlier, I would have needed more than a simple affirmation.
> i don't want the policies you favor
I do not want them either. I do not favour them. Quite the opposite. That’s actually my entire initial point: what I favour is hard to reconcile with my experiences and the emotions associated with them.
You could have offered some interesting, helpful, constructive, and interesting, perspective on that. And re-reading your replies, I’m pretty sure you tried in your own way. But instead it reads like you chose to come waltzing in and bite my head off.
> when you opened that page, why did you just close it? why didn't you send those pictures to the police, to investigative journalists, or to a private investigator?
I was 16, living in a foreign country.
> so no, it wasn't whataboutism
And I am glad it wasn’t. Thank you.
As for the rest, I definitely understand and agree on the need for means to securely and reliably communicate information that some states would rather censor. Despite our differences, it is clear we both care about these issues.
I am however afraid this is all the common ground you and I will be able to find. So I will stop engaging any further and step away from this conversation.
I will however grant you the benefit of the doubt and engage further.
For you, child abuse might be an abstract concept. To me, it is gut-wrenching memories. I would have spared you the details, but it seems you prefer everything to be spelled out for you. So here it is.
I grew up in a country where impoverished families in rural areas often send their children to the city, supposedly to attend school. Instead of being educated or taken care of, many of these children are sent to beg on the streets, to bring back money, only to be beaten and starved until they meet their quotas. Some are raped. Some run away.
Of those who run away, some return home. When they do, their families often send them back, either because they don’t believe their stories, refuse to believe them, or simply cannot afford to keep them.
Those who don’t return end up living on the streets on their own, forming bands of children begging, stealing, and proudly telling you how they’re the ones buying the solvent to sniff for the group.
Despite witnessing this firsthand, I can only imagine that the full horror of it is far worse than I will ever understand.
To top it all, when I came back years to visit some friends I learned from social workers actually trying to get these children off the street that as they grow up some of the older kids actually often start raping the younger ones.
So, you see, I really could have been spared the lecture.
These experiences shape my deep concerns about the impacts of absolute anonymity and privacy. While I instinctively value these principles, actually understanding real-world implications make it difficult to hold them above all else without question.
There is a significant gap in our experiences. While I am glad many have no first or second hand knowledge on any of these topics, this gap might make it challenging for the two of us to have, on this topic, the fully rational discussion you appear to want.
Ironically, this difficulty perfectly underscores my point: while privacy and freedom of expression are crucial, some experiences compel me to question how we balance these ideals with the need to prevent harm.
Now, onto the censorship of evidence issue.
First, I fail to grasp how exposing unwitting people to this kind of content would, in any way, help find abusers. Your Vietnam war example might have been valid, arguably, if public awareness on the issue of child pornography needed to be raised. If, like during the Vietnam war, public opinion was divided on the topic. Thankfully, it isn’t.
Second, moderating such content doesn’t mean it couldn’t or shouldn’t reported to law enforcement. Such systems already exist. They have their faults [0], but they exist.
> see, it’s much easier to have a rational discussion when you spell out your position instead of relying on winks and nudges
I assumed the issue was clear and didn’t want to force explicit details onto unwitting readers. I will not apologise for that.
[0]: https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-On...