Lucien ,
@Lucien@hexbear.net avatar

That was terrifying

chicken ,

Some snippets from the article:

Cadenhead then started a Discord server called “764,” after the first three digits of [his] zip code ... sentenced to 80 years in prison. Now 18 years old, he is currently incarcerated

“How-to” guides on sexually exploiting and extorting minors online were circulated in their channels.

Thomas-Gabriel Rüdiger, head of the Institute for Cyber Criminology at the Brandenburg Police University, assumes that most offenders feel safe online. "Particularly in a global context, the pressure by law enforcement on the internet can only be considered very low,” he says. This remains true, he says, “even if individual groups are repeatedly taken down.”

Eve’s mother recounted her daughter being drawn into the exploitation network through “gore” servers on Discord, where children would watch ultra-violent content. “What 764 would do is they would go in and drop videos in these groups and try to start pulling kids out of that to their server,” she says.

Victims who provided CSAM and self-harm videos were rewarded with attention and praise from the extortion group. In turn, the members who are able to coerce more material from their victims gain status within the group. "The more content they provide, the higher they are in their hierarchy,” says Anna, a young Western European woman who was groomed by 764.

Whenever she resisted his requests to produce “content,” Riley would threaten to send her prior images of self-harm to her parents.

To me the most insidious part of this is how it's organized and systematic. They're figuring out the most effective ways to manipulate and victimize people, teaching and gamifying it.

FilthyHookerSpit ,

This happened to my adult partner. She was playing OW and someone in that lobby started PMing her for nudes, threatening to disconnect out internet. They ended up ddosing us. Then they were saying how they wouldnt turn it back on without nudes or they would tell her "parents".

Most likely they got our IP when she went into a lobby and targeted due to the feminine handle. All I could think after changing IPs was "this guy must be doing this to children". But this was a few years ago before OW2 was a thing.

chicken ,

Same tbh, years ago happened to my girlfriend at the time basically like you describe, ddos our internet, demand nudes. Though I think a lot of that sort of sextortion isn't necessarily on the level of "funnel into a torture cult" described in the article, and a lot of the people doing this are teenage boys acting alone.

leraje ,
@leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

O9A are pure scum. Apart from the direct harm they do to people, they give Satanism a bad name.

yesman ,

We need to come up with some fairy tales. Not Disney fairy tales, but Irish and German fairy tales that we read to small children to frighten and warn them about the dark forest of the internet and the big bad wolves that live there.

josefo ,

That's actually a great idea

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

As a former discord mod who had to see and report some pretty dark shit to the admins, only to see the same offending accounts still up and active, I have zero faith that they're actually addressing this problem.

Fapper_McFapper ,

The internet was a mistake. It also further proves my point that the internet and social media are, in fact, Fermi’s Great Filter.

agent_flounder ,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

Fucking hell. Makes me want to hunt these evil fucks down. Why the fuck we had to evolve to cause each other so much pain and misery I cannot fathom.

fishos ,
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

The Internet only serves to highlight the existence of terrors that before we could be ignorant of. We were always like this.

Fapper_McFapper ,

You can make the argument that the internet facilitated communication between all these fringe groups. Yes, we may have always been this way but with the internet people can find each other on a global scale much easier than at anytime in our previous history.

fishos ,
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

It doesn't change who they are at their core tho. They're just organized now. But at their core, people were the same then as now. The Internet is just digitalized socialization. Society is the problem, not the tool used to communicate.

Fapper_McFapper ,

Correct, but the tool is what facilitates that communication.

yesman ,

"Crushing videos" were outlawed in 1999. Largely distributed on VHS, sexual fetishists filmed themselves stepping on and crushing small animals.

The law was partially struck down in 2010 on free speech grounds, and the law was amended to be less vague.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Stevens

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Disgusting

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works avatar

This is fucked.

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