Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/06/alabama-monster-arrested.html
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The Alabama man wanted for a viral child rape video that was shared widely on Facebook has been arrested.
“Widely”?? Someone is asleep at the wheel at Facebook. That is nuts.
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I guess Facebook is more like Twitter all the time?
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And how can anyone even think hey I should pass this along rather than flag/report/whatever it is you do on facebook then go have a very large drink to recover.
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Only thing I can think of is a private group dedicated to this sort of thing. (I get suggestions for some pretty porny private groups)
Doesn’t change the fact that this should have been caught sooner.
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anyone who shares the video, even in outrage…
Can you even see that happening? “This video is terrible, I’d better send it to all my friends so they can see how terrible it is!”
Also, I do not think “snuff” means what you think it means, and thank God.
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I don’t have an answer to that so I will make unsupported conjecture.
Perhaps some people don’t see a lot of difference between repeating speech that describes horrifically objectionable behavior and forwarding videos that portray it? I mean, coarseness and vulgarity are the norm in the national discourse now, and it’s common to see fake video that is difficult or impossible to discern from reality, and someone passing along a video can truthfully say they did not actually do any of the things portrayed, so I can see someone (particularly someone who grew up in the current toxic noösphere) convincing themselves that passing it along is a morally neutral act.
I mean, I would report it, personally, so I can’t really figure out why someone wouldn’t. But people are much more vulgar than they used to be in public.
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Widely shared on FB… I couldn’t possibly eat the amount I want to throw up.
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According to the news stories the video was widely reported and the forwarding was done in hopes of somebody recognizing the perpetrator. Apparently it worked, he got caught!
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I took it as metaphorical. I mean, if there is a kind of film that deserves a metaphorical connection to snuff film, child porn is it.
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One would think, “Don’t share child porn, and if you inadvertently have it show up in your feed, report it, block it, and delete all your temp internet files and stay off fFace book for a few days.” would be basic common sense but I guess not.
If child porn showed up in my facebook feed I think I might delete my facebook account.
ETA: Actually, I think I am going to delete my facebook account.
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I’d probably remove the person who shared it. But this was one viral thing I mercifully wasn’t part of.
I’ve avoided this problem by never getting an account, but my animal loving friend is always getting horrific animal torture videos (of one type or another) posted to her wall by people who honestly think they are doing good by sharing the outrage… She has had to block a number of otherwise wonderful animal loving groups due to this style of sharing.
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Could be that some of them have heard FB is sometimes slow to respond to such stuff, if they respond at all. Or it could be they’ve seen other instances where the sharing of a video or image has led to the arrest/questioning of whoever’s in the video. Seems like every week on the news there’s some “viral video” whose stars are now being questioned by police.
It’s also probable that a lot of people are just assholes. That’s another thing the news always shows me.
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Here in Australia we are reeling with the bizarre revelations around this circus school child abuse ring: http://expressdigest.com/katoombas-arcade-circus-school-accused-of-child-sex-abuse/
So one slightly less horrible reason for this being widely shared is that people didn’t watch the video itself - they just shared it because they thought it just had the picture of the alleged perpetrator. They didn’t realize the clip itself was the whole movie.
Not a good excuse. But given how little effort people can put into details, perhaps an explanatory one.
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It’s official: Facebook is the new /b/
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Thank you for avoiding the obvious outrage and taking the time to post a reasonable explanation for why anyone might think it’s okay to share this on Facebook.
Maybe it did work, but is this really the best way we have to catch sexual predators? I would guess at least as many people recognised the victim as the perpetrator, which is just horrible.
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