European police say KidFlix, "one of the largest pedophile platforms in the world," busted in joint operation.
Global crackdown on Kidflix, a major child sexual exploitation platform with almost two million users | Europol
Does it feel odd to anyone else that a platform for something this universally condemned in any jurisdiction can operate for 4 years, with a catchy name clearly thought up by a marketing person, its own payment system and nearly six figure number of videos? I mean even if we assume that some of those 4 years were intentional to allow law enforcement to catch as many perpetrators as possible this feels too similar to fully legal operations in scope.
It's a side effect of privacy and security. The one side effect they're trying to use to undermine all of the privacy and security.
This has nothing to do with privacy! Criminals have their techniques and methods to protect themselves and their "businesses" from discovery, both in the real world and in the online world. Even in a complete absence of privacy they would find a way to hide their stuff from the police - at least for a while.
In the real world, criminals (e.g. drug dealers) also use cars, so you could argue, that druck trafficking is a side effect of people having cars...
with a catchy name clearly thought up by a marketing person
A marketing person? They took "Netflix" and changed the first three letters lol
So you are saying it is too creative for the average person in marketing?
With the amount of sites that are easily accessed on the dark net though the hidden wiki and other sites. This might of been a honeypot from the start.
On the contrary, why would they announce that they seized the site? To cause more panic, and to exaggerate the actual situation?
In addition, that last point should be considered because even if they used these type of operations, honeypotting would still be considered illegal. So Ultimately what is stopping the supreme power to abuse that power on other people?
It definitely seems weird how easy it is to stumble upon CP online, and how open people are about sharing it, with no effort made, in many instances, to hide what they're doing. I've often wondered how much of the stuff is spread by pedo rings and how much is shared by cops trying to see how many people they can catch with it.
If you have stumbled on CP online in the last 10 years, you're either really unlucky or trawling some dark waters. This ain't 2006. The internet has largely been cleaned up.
Fuck man. I used to use a program called “Kidpix” when I was a kid. It was like ms paint but with fun effects and sounds.
Holy. Shit. This is somehow glorious on an oled iPad screen. The late 1900s never looked so good.
Thank you for given me a nostalgia jolt that I didn’t know I wanted, but am fully enjoying right now
When I read the very first bit I was like "oh is that a new kids tv streaming platform from the same creators as kidpix?" Then I was immediately hit with the reality of the grim world we live in
I used to love the dynamite tool!
I loved the explosion sound, and the "oh no" when you click the undo button. I have the Windows versions of KidPix on CD somewhere.
Haha yep, kidpix deluxe 3 I remember fondly
Same here! We had it on a Macintosh LC 575. I will never forget those sound effects haha.
Omg I remember Kidpix! It was great!
This… not so much.
Oh no!
On average, around 3.5 new videos were uploaded to the platform every hour, many of which were previously unknown to law enforcement.
Absolutely sick and vile. I hope they honey potted the site and that the arrests keep coming.
I just got ill
1.8m users, how the hell did they ran that website for 3 years?
That’s unfortunately (not really sure) probably the fault of Germanys approach to that. It is usually not taking these websites down but try to find the guys behind it and seize them. The argument is: they will just use a backup and start a “KidFlix 2” or sth like that. Some investigations show, that this is not the case and deleting is very effective. Also the German approach completely ignores the victim side. They have to deal with old men masturbating to them getting raped online. Very disturbing…
I think you are mixing here two different aspects of this and of similar past cases. I the past there was often a problem with takedowns of such sites, because german prosecutors did not regard themselves as being in charge of takedowns, if the servers were somewhere overseas. Their main focus was to get the admins and users of those sites and to get them into jail.
In this specific case they were observing this platform (together with prosecutors from other countries in an orchestrated operation) to gather as much data as possible about the structure, the payment flows, the admins and the users of this before moving into action and getting them arrested. The site was taken down meanwhile.
If you blow up and delete)such a darknet service immediately upon discovery, you may get rid of it (temporarily) but you might not catch many of the people behind it.
This feels like one of those things where couch critics aren't qualified. There's a pretty strong history of three letter agencies using this strategy successfully in other organized crime industries.
Wow, with such a daring name as well. Fucking disgusting.
I once saw a list of defederated lemmy instances. In most cases, and I mean like 95% of them, the reason of thedefederation was pretty much in the instance name. CP everywhere. Humanity is a freaking mistake.
Isnit not encouraging that it is ostracised and removed from normal people. There are horrible parts of everything in nature, life is good despite those people and because of the rest combatting their shittiness
With everything going on right now, the fact that I still feel physically sick reading things like this tells me I haven’t gone completely numb yet. Just absolutely repulsive.
I know I'm not heartless yet because I am still traumatized by the brick in the window video...
Here’s a reminder that you can submit photos of your hotel room to law enforcement, to assist in tracking down CSAM producers. The vast majority of sex trafficking media is produced in hotels. So being able to match furniture, bedspreads, carpet patterns, wallpaper, curtains, etc in the background to a specific hotel helps investigators narrow down when and where it was produced.
Wouldnt this be so much better if we got hoteliers on board instead of individuals
Thank you for posting this.
1.8 million users and they only caught 1000?
I imagine it's easier to catch uploaders than viewers.
It's also probably more impactful to go for the big "power producers" simultaneously and quickly before word gets out and people start locking things down.
If that's the actual splash screen that pops up when you try to access it (no, I'm not going to go to it and check, I don't want to be on a new and exciting list) then kudos to the person who put that together. Shit goes hard. So do all the agency logos.
Massive congratulations to Europol and its partners in taking this shit down and putting these perverts away. However, they shouldn't rest on their laurels. The objective now is to ensure that the distribution of this disgusting material is stopped outright and that no further children are harmed.
Every now and again I am reminded of my sentiment that the introduction of "media" onto the Internet is a net harm. Maybe 256 dithered color photos like you'd see in Encarta 95 and that's the maximum extent of what should be allowed. There's just so much abuse from this kind of shit... despicable.
Raping kids has unfortunately been a thing since long before the internet. You could legally bang a 13 year old right up to the 1800s and in some places you still can.
As recently as the 1980s people would openly advocate for it to be legal, and remove the age of consent altogether. They'd get it in magazines from countries where it was still legal.
I suspect it's far less prevalent now than it's ever been. It's now pretty much universally seen as unacceptable, which is a good start.
The youngest Playboy model, Eva Ionesco, was only 12 years old at the time of the photo shoot, and that was back in the late 1970’s... It ended up being used as evidence against the Eva’s mother (who was also the photographer), and she ended up losing custody of Eva as a result. The mother had started taking erotic photos (ugh) of Eva when she was only like 5 or 6 years old, under the guise of “art”. It wasn’t until the Playboy shoot that authorities started digging into the mother’s portfolio.
But also worth noting that the mother still holds copyright over the photos, and has refused to remove/redact/recall photos at Eva’s request. The police have confiscated hundreds of photos for being blatant CSAM, but the mother has been uncooperative in a full recall. Eva has sued the mother numerous times to try and get the copyright turned over, which would allow her to initiate the recall instead.
It is easy to very feel disillusioned with the world, but it is important to remember that there are still good people all around willing to fight the good fight. And it is also important to remember that technology is not inherently bad, it is a neutral object, but people could use it for either good or bad purposes.
I think it just shows all the hideousness of humanity and all it's glory in a way that we have never confronted before. It's shatters the illusion the humanity has grown from its barbaric ways.
With that logic, I might as well throw away my computer and phone and go full Uncle Ted.
