Read more here https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-york-sex-trafficking-victims/
A Tinder-like app popular among teenagers and young adults has allegedly been used to extort users by tricking them into sending sexually explicit photos, a problem that internet safety watchdogs say is indicative of the challenges of keeping young people safe on social media.
The app, Wizz, allows users to scroll through profiles that show a person’s picture, first name, age, state and zodiac sign. Wizz advertises the app as a “safe space” to meet new friends and allows users as young as 13 to join and connect with users of a similar age.
Its basic functionality resembles popular dating apps. When users open the app, they are presented with another person’s profile. They can then choose to send that person a message in the app’s chat function or swipe left to see a new profile.
Child safety watchdogs have questioned whether the app’s safety system is effective.
Read more here.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/friend-finding-app-offered-safe-space-teens-sextortion-soon-followed-rcna91172
Melanie blacked out — and she says she woke up to being raped. She told me how a pimp then locked her with another girl in an abandoned house, and she had a new job: having sex with strangers against her will.
She was 13.
When we spoke two years later, she was in a residential program for formerly trafficked girls. She was thoughtful, charming and fond of poetry, but I wondered if she would be able to rebuild her life. Then I lost track of her, until a message arrived from her this spring. We met, and she filled me in on her bumpy journey — and her campaign against what she sees as misguided liberalism that would legalize pimping.
Melanie spent years in foster care after I met her. There’s no doubt that some foster care parents are outstanding, but overall, America’s foster care system is a disgrace. Only about half of foster children finish high school; perhaps 4 percent earn a B.A. By several estimates, a majority of trafficked girls have been in foster care or some other part of the child welfare system.
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That was Melanie’s world. She says she was trafficked again, leaving her teenage years a blur of trauma. The sex trade left a mark on her and made it difficult to relate to other high school students, she said.
“You feel like damaged goods,” she recalled. “You also internalize the shame people put on you.”
After attending five high schools, she finally graduated at age 19. A path opened when she interned with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, a nonprofit in New York.
Taina Bien-Aimé, the executive director of the coalition, was swept away. “She’s an extraordinary human being, very determined, ambitious, smart, focused,” Bien-Aimé told me. So she hired Melanie, who is now the outreach and advocacy coordinator for the coalition.
Image
Melanie Thompson in a red shirt with a light denim jacket and silver jewelry. She looks toward the camera and leans to the side.
Thompson worries that efforts to decriminalize the sex trade will make it easier for pimps to exploit vulnerable people.Credit…Jenica Heintzelman for The New York Times
Melanie Thompson in a red shirt with a light denim jacket and silver jewelry. She looks toward the camera and leans to the side.
Meanwhile, Melanie earned her B.A. in gender studies. In college, she often found herself the odd woman out. In classes, there would be discussions of the sex trade, with affluent students or professors speaking of sex work for consenting adults as empowering, while that did not remotely ring true for Melanie. Her situation as a trafficked child was of course different, for there was no consent and she recalled nothing but abuse. But her life in the world of commercial sex left her convinced that lines were more blurred than outsiders understood and that there wasn’t much empowerment going on even among adults; it was largely about vulnerable people being exploited.
That disconnect is now her focus. There is a drive in blue states, including New York, to decriminalize the entire sex trade, giving a green light to pimping and brothel-keeping. Melanie argues for something closer to the model in Sweden and Norway, which do not arrest prostitutes (instead offering them social services) but do prosecute pimps and johns. While frankly no legal approach works all that well, Sweden has promoted its approach internationally as a way to reduce trafficking. Maine has just become the first state in America to adopt that Nordic approach.
Melanie, now 27, warns that the result of full decriminalization, including allowing pimps and brothels, would be more trafficking of victims who are overwhelmingly Black and brown, or coming out of foster care, or L.G.B.T.Q. youth or others who are marginalized. Indeed, one large global study found that legalization is associated with more trafficking, not less.
Clearly there is a slice of the commercial sex trade that is consensual, another that is nonconsensual, and other elements that are more murky. In other contexts where there’s a significant power imbalance and vulnerability, such as relationships between bosses and interns, we tend to apply bans because of the potential for predation.
The push in recent years to allow pimping seems odd to me, because elsewhere we liberals are alert to the potential for exploitation. We bar work among consenting adults if it’s performed for less than the minimum wage, for example, and we block consensual high-risk work like using window-washing platforms without many safeguards.
Commercial sex is more dangerous than window-washing or almost any other job, and Melanie scoffs at the view that pimps are business partners of women selling sex. “I never touched the money,” she told me. “And if you got caught trying to stash anything, it was not good for you.”
We have made strides in empowering affluent, educated women and girls, with Title IX, #MeToo and more female lawyers, doctors and board members. But some of the most vulnerable girls in America, those in foster care, have benefited much less.
I fear that if this well-meaning push for full decriminalization proceeds, the winners will be pimps and the losers will be some of America’s most vulnerable young people. There are many other Melanies out there who need help, and we risk throwing them to the wolves.
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More than 4 million people have called the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline since it launched last July. But a new poll from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found that 82 percent of Americans remain unaware of the 911 alternative for mental health crises.
The Hill hosted a discussion with lawmakers, mental health experts and advocates Thursday about increasing awareness and capacity of the hotline.
“One point that often gets lost is that there has not been appropriations for an awareness campaign, so we can’t be surprised that awareness is low when we haven’t really invested in that wide-scale research and promotion,” Wesolowski said.
Wesolowski compared the potential campaign to smoking cessation campaigns, which required around $50 million to $100 million to “save lives” — though she said anything would have an impact.
The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI, the artificial intelligence start-up that makes ChatGPT, over whether the chatbot has harmed consumers through its collection of data and its publication of false information on individuals.
In a 20-page letter sent to the San Francisco company this week, the agency said it was also looking into OpenAI’s security practices. The F.T.C. asked OpenAI dozens of questions in its letter, including how the start-up trains its A.I. models and treats personal data, and said the company should provide the agency with documents and details.
The F.T.C. is examining whether OpenAI “engaged in unfair or deceptive privacy or data security practices or engaged in unfair or deceptive practices relating to risks of harm to consumers,” the letter said.
The investigation was reported earlier by The Washington Post and confirmed by a person familiar with the investigation.
Minimum age raised to 18 in state that allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to wed with written permission from parent or guardian.
The governor of Michigan signed legislation Tuesday that aims to eventually end child marriage in that state, raising the minimum age at which one can get married to 18 years old under all circumstances. The state previously allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to wed with written permission from a parent or legal guardian. Minors under 16 were able to get married with judicial approval. But several laws signed by Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer effectively stop the practice, the Detroit Free Press reports.
