62 million men

[Perfect28]

Apologies if there's a thread about this already, I can't find one. I'm so shaken by this story, for me it's the sheer audacity of it.

Exposing a global ‘online rape academy’ that is teaching men how to abuse women and evade detection https://share.google/8PCNKebmst0gw6yLc

Correction* 62 million visits, not men.

I don't want to get into the subject but I'm going to allude to it. There is another topic which I feel has become a massive distraction to feminism currently. And I don't think the feminists who oppose that kind of stuff are doing any of us any favours by constantly going on about it. Not when crap like this deserves to be fought for. Tooth and bloody nail.

I didn't want to mention it either, but yes this was my thought. Women's rights on MN tends to be focused on one subject, a subject which concerns 0.5% of the population.

Meanwhile a woman in the UK is killed by a male partner or ex partner every two days.
1/4 women in the UK have been sexually assaulted or raped.
59% of girls have experienced sexual harassment at school in the past year.

It's an emergency and the other subject deflects time, energy, and rage from this.

Back onto the topic, kinda. I've probably mentioned her already, because I find any excuse to but as politicians go, I bloody love what Jess Phillips does with all this. The attention she has brought to VAWG and the experience she has working with survivors.

I don't respect many politicians but I respect her.

Just read the article. There's not a rape academy with 62m views as the OP suggests. That figure is referring to the monthly views of the website Motherless which also hosts lots of normal porn as well as the dodgy stuff you'll inevitably find on these hosting sites with lax censorship.

For comparison Pornhub had over 4bn visits the same month. It's still a pretty shocking read but not quite what is being implied. I used to work in digital forensics so I'm well aware of pervert rings. They've been around forever. However, they're a pretty niche thing, albeit a very grim one.

The internet has defo been a problematic invention in terms of allowing perverts (usually paedophiles) to coordinate and share dodgy content, and it defo seems like many offenders were consuming this type of online content prior to committing offences (I think Wayne Cousens was, wasn't he?). Although of course correlation and causation aren't the same thing.

But I think we also need to be wary of people using sensationalised figures to stir up hate/push an agenda. It's basically what Farage was doing when he falsely claimed Afghan men were 40x more likely to commit a sexual offence.

That's correct, but these are mostly legal, simulated 'sleep' videos rather than videos of people assaulting someone who is genuinely asleep/drugged. It's grim, certainly and could be a gateway into more sinister content for some. But it's not a significant amount content, relatively speaking.

Interestingly, more mainstream sites like PornHub have removed all 'sleep' content, and trying to search for it brings up a warning about potentially illegal media.

They won't have anything meaningful. They accessed a Telegram group as a user, any info they did get was only what was volunteered to them by individual users. Telegram is a fairly anonymous platform...you can sign up on a phone with a virtual number and mask your IP address to avoid detection. Private chats are end to end encrypted, so even Telegram can't read them.

I understand about the anonymity of such groups, but if a journalist was able to track down an individual, surely more could be found through more low-tech investigative means?

I guess I’m thinking more about in terms of appeals for victims and then cross referencing those against any media which was uploaded.

It’s shitty that it seems like hoping for some kind of action or investigation is having expectations that are too high.

but if a journalist was able to track down an individual, surely more could be found through more low-tech investigative means?

In theory, maybe. Worth pointing out though that the journalists behind the CNN piece didn't track that individual down through any particular investigative means...he bizarrely told them exactly where he lived out of the blue one day.

That was the only tangible evidence the entire CNN investigation turned up. There was literally nothing else to investigate, low tech or otherwise.

I guess I’m thinking more about in terms of appeals for victims and then cross referencing those against any media which was uploaded

Remember that the CNN investigation didn't gain access to a cache of media, just a chat group where some users offered such media for sale privately.

It’s shitty that it seems like hoping for some kind of action or investigation is having expectations that are too high.

It's extremely shitty that very little has come of this particular case in terms of justice, but we can't expect the impossible.There was no further action anyone could have taken here, nothing to investigate. It's just one case though, it doesn't mean that nothing is being done about online abuse material.

On the plus side, it's illustrated the ways in which online anonymity can be exploited for criminal purposes, and the need for greater powers to combat them.

@Kimura thanks for your thoughts.

Nothing personal aimed at you, but I’m still bloody outraged that the general response is “sorry folks, nothing to see here. There’s nothing to be done, even though we know it’s happening”

Nothing personal aimed at you, but I’m still bloody outraged

Oh no I think it's completely understandable to be outraged! It's an emotive subject. But the misinformation that spread and a widespread misunderstanding of what was actually uncovered by CNN has resulted in a lot of misdirected outrage.

the general response is “sorry folks, nothing to see here. There’s nothing to be done, even though we know it’s happening

I don't think that's what's happening though. People aren't suggesting that because the exposure of this particular group didn't lead to more prosecutions, that there's nothing more to be done about these crimes in general.

Remember, the CNN investigation featured just one Telegram channel - there will undoubtedly be other hubs. The channel is gone but those users still exist both online and in the real world. The fight against online sexual abuse materials is ongoing, regardless of dead ends. This was just one piece of a larger puzzle.

Progress in this particular area is ongoing - jurisdictions the world over are bringing in or expanding laws to recognize this as its own crime. There are (thankfully) still so few known incidences of it that accurate reporting doesn't exist, so the legal progress is huge.

Law enforcement agencies are seeking to expand their power to compel the tech firms behind anonymous communication platforms to turn over information. That's something that by it's very nature can't be done overnight, but when it does it'll be a game changer.