Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

UK tabloid media seems hellbent upon resurrecting the myth of “red rooms” (i.e. “dark web snuff movies”) even though there is no such phenomenon

I’ve had The BBC and The Sun contact me in the past few weeks, and it seems that others are trying to keep the groundless tech-fearmongering going.

Quoting the Reddit Deep Web FAQ:

Red rooms are fake. One more time, say it with me: “Red rooms are fake”. To this day, not one single person has proven the existence of a genuine live stream murder for profit. Plenty of fakes have been debunked, however.

Just as there were no snuff. movies and there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there are always people who gain both power and profit from spreading misinformation based on speculation and dodgy, scary evidence which does not substantiate an actual phenomenon.

The supposed provocation of these stories is that a deranged and horrible murderer is (massively oversimplistically) blaming her actions upon seeking out and seeing a “red room”; but the cause-and-effect perspective of the journalism makes no sense for the case.

Hence: I’m half-wondering if the Home Office isn’t behind this, as a follow-through of their anti-encryption efforts. At least there would be more meaning to the story than filling of airtime and column-inches with cyberstuff that stopped being sexy in 2019 when the BBC opened its own “dark web” site.

⊞

Comments

6 responses to “UK tabloid media seems hellbent upon resurrecting the myth of “red rooms” (i.e. “dark web snuff movies”) even though there is no such phenomenon”

  1. Perry

    You would almost think from such discussions that many journalists don’t care very much about truth and are more interested in frightening people in order to increase revenues for their employers. But of course, since such a conclusion would be supported by long experience and substantial evidence, we would expect it to never be published in a modern newspaper.

    Reply
  2. Mark Truman

    Meanwhile in the US Snapchat are supporting KOSA. Genuinely worried about it passing now and the future of the Internet https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/29/snap-breaks-under-pressure-supports-dangerous-kosa-bill-that-will-put-kids-in-danger/

    Reply
  3. Stephen Gentle

    @alecm So tiring trying to debunk the same kinds of nonsense, over and over and over and over again… ????

  4. Chris Monteiro

    @alecm got a partial retraction https://twitter.com/Deku_shrub/status/1753401777796386861?t=ymiobrNOrhSG9d6t26nKRw&s=19

    1. alecm

      I am actually swapping notes with Alan on a regular basis; Alan is mildly hung up about “not trying to prove a negative” but he agrees that the supposed phenomenon is “very unlikely”

      Reply
  5. B

    For those younger than me, and like me, not into horror stories, “red room” is probably an homage to Stephen King’s “redrum” in one of his books. “Redrum” is murder spelled backwards. (Excuse if you know this.)

    Back in the middle 1990’s a colleague asked me if I’d heard of snuff movies. I hadn’t. But after quizzing him about what they were, I had a hard time believing he believed in them.

    If even just one was found to be true it would be a big story, let alone it being a genre. Serial murders/murderers make news in a big way, and I’d not heard of it happening at all. Glad to see Snopes was calling it bs.

    @alec your link to the Rolling Stone article was informative in the first few paragraphs.

    So the answer is to make all our houses out of transparent glass?

    Which of course leads to the saying about those who live in glass houses. They shouldn’t throw stones.

    Yet this whole campaign of theirs is/was far more radical than throwing proverbial stones. They are not trying to ding E2EE but obliterate it. That they want to spend tax dollars on it is another astounding act of using citizens’ own money to dumb us down. Disgraceful people who don’t deserve power.

    Daily Mail journalist Liz Hull ought to be ashamed for writing such an uncritical and unquestioning piece.

    As I read it, what struck me is the similarity to what I’ve read about various trials in the U.S. involving drugs. Prosecutors offer plea deals and lesser charges when the defendant scapegoats drugs. I’m not talking about drunk driving, but other drugs. Even though I’ve never taken the drugs, I know their stories are hogwash, only believable by those who’ve been exposed to so many lies for so long.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More posts