They should ban https to protect the children /s
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Well, yeah, that’s common knowledge, but we’re talking about meeting people online.
That would be different. I’m not sure about trafficking, but the Guardian article was more about distribution of CSAM material.
Ah, the Guardian article worded it a bit differently, but I did guess it would be a popular online platform like Roblox.
Defaulting the accounts to private maybe? Restricting who can DM you by default?
Explaining the dangers to children (when setup, when DM, tutos)?
Disallowing phone phone number discovery for people who say they are under 18?
Encouraging parents (and users in general)to not post pictures about their children (or people who do not consent in general)?
Enforcing e2e DMs worldwide?
Not encouraging users as much to post pictures ?
Not asking for the real names of users, especially warning about using their real name in the username?
These are just some ideas 
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I would bet money they’re experts in opinion-holding, which is why they’re not named. Some windbag that had a headshot and not a resume.
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Well, the author not only confindent enough to have a strong opinion about a technology she doesn’t understand — an opinion which uses fear and ignorance to give the oligarchy total control over communication — speaks to something dark. We are so far removed from true tyranny in the West that we, apparenly, are going to have to suffer through it again (and over come it again and again and again).
It’s the Anti-Enlightenment, boys and girls! The cycle begins again, I’m afraid. Sadly, I’m not old so I’m going to have to suffer through it.
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Disappointing to see this yellow journalism from The Guardian.
I’m going to highlight a few of the ways this piece misrepresents research or is otherwise misleading:
Katie McQue, the article’s author, refers to “A study published by Nature” and “Research published in the Journal of Online Trust and Safety”. This makes it sound like two independent studies, but in reality it’s the same research project, conducted by the same people, in both journals. The study published in 2022 in the Journal of Online Trust and Safety is based on a subset of the data used in the study published in Nature in 2024.
The study’s lead author is Juha Nurmi, the operator of ahmia.fi. Ahmia is a special-purpose search engine - it only indexes, and returns results for, onion sites. The study’s data on search queries is drawn entirely from searches performed on Ahmia. As such, this data is not representative of most tor usage. The study authors specifically acknowledge this fact, stating, “Tor is mainly used to access legal clear web content, as only 6.7% of Tor users access hidden onion services (Jardine, Lindner, and Owenson 2020)”.
When McQue says “at least 11% of users’ searches seek CSAM” she’s creating the impression that 11% of tor users are searching for CSAM, but in reality what the study indicates is that 11% of search sessions on Ahmia include CSAM terms. The searches on Ahmia represent at most a single-digit percentage of all tor searches, and given their exclusive focus on onion sites, the portion of their searches aimed at CSAM is certain to be vastly higher than searches performed elsewhere using tor. The study authors do not attempt to estimate how many unique individuals, and how many bots, are responsible for the traffic on Ahmia.
Later in the article, McQue quotes Nurmi as a “cybersecurity expert and postdoctoral research fellow at Tampere University in Finland”, but makes no mention of the fact that he’s the operator of Ahmia and the author of the two studies she referenced earlier.
McQue uses the header “Millions of pedophiles”, apparently based on Europol reporting that Kidflix had 1.8 million users and another site’s claims of having a million users. But the anonymous nature of tor makes it very difficult to tell whether two different page loads, or even two different accounts on a darknet site belong to two different individuals, or whether they are in fact the same person. If it were possible to accurately distinguish between unique visitors using tor, then tor wouldn’t be blocked by cloudflare on half the web like it is today.
Good journalism would give readers an accurate understanding of the statistics.
Good journalism would make the reader aware of all the caveats and limitations in the methodologies.
Good journalism would clarify what tor is, what “dark web” means, and how those are different. It would make clear that tor is a transport, not a hosting platform, and would help the reader understand that the statement, “experts interviewed urged Tor to act to remove CSAM from its sites” makes about as much sense as “experts interviewed urged the highway to act to remove illegal substances from shops and storefronts”
Ending child abuse is a worthy cause. Using the issue as a bogeyman to undermine civil liberties is not.
McQue’s next article might well be titled: “Security at a cost: door locks help human traffickers imprison victims”.
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Wow. This is straight up propaganda, then. Not surprising, but still.
In the anonymous survey, they only asked the following question: «How often after viewing CSAM/illegal violent material have you sought direct contact with chlldren online?» (p. 11), They did not specify the methods, so it could have been outside Tor, or they could have lied. In that same report, they acknowledge this limitation: «Seto, Hanson, and Babchishin (2011) also point out that some self-reported offenses may be false confessions.» (p. 10).
She later cites that these findings are consistent with other studies that correlate CSAM consumption with child sexual abuse: «This is similar to Seto, Hanson, and Babchishin (2011)'s meta-analysis, which found that 55% of CSAM offenders admitted to contact sexual offense in self-report studies.» (p. 17), However, these studies do not control for the order in which events occur. The same author, Babchishin, later conducted a study finding that it is not common for CSAM offenses to be the first in a criminal career; in many cases, offenders actually escalate from child sexual abuse to CSAM consumption. This would be consistent with a recent meta-analysis that found that those convicted of CSAM very rarely (1.5%) reoffend with a child sexual abuse crime; they are more likely to reoffend with non-sexual crimes.
This does not imply that such content should be tolerated, but rather that we should reflect on the approach currently used to combat this problem. Funding prioritizes strategies to combat individuals who have already committed the crime, which is the lowest level of crime prevention and ignores other ways to combat this crime:
«Consequently, it has been argued that effective prevention initiatives require the development and implementation of interventions at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Adopted from the field of public health, these three levels of prevention have been described as follows: (1) Primary prevention involves wide-scale initiatives aimed at the general public and implemented before the occurrence of sexual violence to prevent even initial incidents of CSA (e.g. general crime deterrence, public education, adequate sex education in schools); (2) Secondary prevention involves more targeted interventions for those at-risk of engaging in CSA, which address issues known to increase the risk of offending (e.g. anonymous helplines for people with sexual interest in children); and (3) Tertiary prevention is a reactionary approach after a sexual offence has occurred, which aims to prevent sexual recidivism (e.g. treatment programs for those who have engaged in CSA) (Laws, 2000; Wortley & Smallbone, 2006).» (P. 3-4)
Ironically, several people who have tried to prosecute child pornography are the very victims they claim to help. Instead of giving authorities more power to abuse their authority by funding measures that have not been proven effective in deterring crime (for example), they should invest more in raising awareness among the general public and in comprehensive sex education for young people so that they can navigate the web more safely:
This review found strong evidence for the effectiveness of child sex abuse prevention efforts in elementary school. Such programs typically use behavioral practice and role-play [80] and encourage parental involvement [81,82]. They teach about body ownership and children’s right to control their bodies [82] and about communication and self-protection [81,82]. A strong meta-analysis of 27 preschool through Grade 5 programs [80] and a systematic review of 24 K-5 programs [83] demonstrate significant effects on a wide range of outcomes, including behaviors in simulated at-risk situations. Another large systematic review concluded that, in general, parental involvement, opportunities for practice, repeated exposure, and sensitivity to developmental level were key characteristics of effective child sex abuse programs [81].
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You should complain to the guardian. I agree that this is disappointing as most of the time, the Guardian seem to take facts seriously.
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Do you know many pedos are on the clearnet? I was groomed on the clearnet. Plenty of pedos abuse kids on roblox and discord while those platforms do nothing about it. But no one cares because it doesn’t sound as “scary” as the dark web.
These corporations steal your data, use the children as an “excuse”, then do nothing to protect those children when they get harmed.
It’s sensationalist and designed to pull at emotional heart strings. You can usually tell with this topic when it’s vague, and makes assertions without an informed position.
As others of said, the “darknet” is not most of the internet, and most of the pedophiles will take path of least resistance and be on mainstream things like regular social networks.
I think this mission of trying close down and lock down everything so they will somehow be identified and excluded is never going to work. Others will of course argue that no cost should be spared, but is not a realistic position as all resources are limited. Nobody works for free in this world, and that includes law enforcement.
I think at this point more focus should be on what to do with them once they’re identified and how it even happens in the first place. Many would say “lock them all up forever” but that costs money too and would only be shifting a problem out of sight, and out of mind. Those offenders are also someone’s children too and I’m not entirely convinced warehousing people and forgetting about them is a solution either.
With young people, producing material of themselves or discovering something online a better approach would be harm reduction. Giving young people a criminal record for that serves absolutely no purpose but sending their lives potentially off-track and into isolation from the community, with the added potential for further offending.
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Sorry, but I lost faith in them since one of their journalist leaked a password of an archive with Snowden leak material. It was a genuine mistake but still.