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Ask HN: Sugar daddies propositioning women and teens on Instagram

6 points by eloff ↗ HN
For a while I've known that "sugar daddies", i.e. wealthy older men are stalking young women on Instagram and offering money in exchange for sex, nude photos, etc. My wife, who looks like she's 21-23 complains about getting these messages all the time and shows them to me. It's gross, but talking with some friends who have teenage daughters last night, I discovered it's a lot more sinister.

Some of these men are propositioning underage teens (14, 15 years old). They offer, e.g. $700/week for just conversation in the beginning, and then that escalates to asking for nude photos and who knows what else.

Some friends of the girls, just 14 and 15 years old, are actually involved in this, and have shared screenshots of the bank deposits to prove it's real. This is in Vancouver, Canada, but I assume it's happening elsewhere too.

It makes me really mad. Why are adult men with no contacts in common allowed to send messages to underage girls? Facebook knows your age and gender and contacts. Even if you have a public profile, this just shouldn't be permitted. That seems like the most simple and basic of protections and it hasn't been done.

How are these predators so brazen as to proposition children on Instagram without consequences? Are Instagram messages end-to-end encrypted? I'm a big fan of end-to-end encryption, but now I'm seeing some flaws with the idea.

If you have children, talk with them to make sure their Instagram account privacy settings are activated. I don't think it's a good idea for children to have a public account.

4 comments

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Daho0n
Sadly this isn't new. In my opinion it's allowed for two reasons: No uproar and because it is a US company. If it were a Chinese or Russian owned company for example the company and their apps would have been completely blocked, sanctioned and fined.

I doubt we will see an uproar or shitstorm about this unless some celebrity is caught doing it. I also doubt a US company will be punished in any meaningful form for allowing this.

I'd say ban use of the apps in your house and let them use Tiktok instead (it does lock down profiles for children as default). I've given up warning against this.

snvzz
Your concern is a small one, considering how bad it is to go anywhere near any Facebook product (which includes Instagram), or how irresponsible it is to let children do so.

Facebook is known to be consistently harmful to mental health and privacy, while providing no benefit whatsoever. It is a net negative to society. There's no defending it.

eloff
I agree with this. We would have been better off if Facebook and it's ilk did not exist. I deleted my accounts long ago, but I wish my wife would do the same.
yuppie_scum
I need to figure out how to effectively persuade people in my life (family) away from it. They just seem to simply not care. The older generation in particular just don’t give a crap about how shady and dangerous it is.