They’ve built one of the most horrifyingly precise targeted ads platforms in the world. You think they can’t figure out how to flag for a child safety team to check out when some middle-aged man messages dozens of kids? They can and often do, but that’s bad for “business” apparently.

Before people suggest I’m talking KOSA or age verification, etc, Facebook and Instagram already know so much about every user that they’re a go-to source for intelligence agencies. The algo already knows when an adult is messaging teenagers the platform is already monitoring for targeted ads.

And the reality is just so, so much more complicated than that, and the simplistic framing misleads people into thinking they'll notice it happening to the people around them because the groups who do it are very obvious. They aren't, and it only takes the right cause/framing to hook almost anyone.

It's not a framing exclusive to Wired, a lot of reporting in the area has the implicit assumption that only certain people are susceptible/only certain groups do the indoctrination, and a site removing those people/groups will make it Safe Forever because they got rid of the people who are Wrong

Threats. This needs to be taken seriously. Many people around the world step back because the internet allows threats and organized harm like never before.

That hit me like an arrow to the knee.