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European police say KidFlix, "one of the largest pedophile platforms in the world," busted in joint operation.

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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Tea@programming.dev⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/global-crackdown-kidflix-major-child-sexual-exploitation-platform-almost-two-million-users

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Comments

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  • futatorius@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Leak the subscribers’ details.

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  • TJC@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Maybe Jeff Bezos will write an article about him and editorialize about “personal liberty”. I have to keep posting this because every day another MAGA/lover - religious bigot or otherwise pretend upstanding community member is indicted or arrested for heinous acts against women and children.

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  • Corno@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Geez, two million? Good riddance. Great job everyone!

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    • Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Happy cake day!

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      • Corno@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Thank you! 😃

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  • Kobo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Good fucking riddance

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  • quack@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Excellent work. That’s an unimaginable amount of abuse material.

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  • Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Goddam what an obvious fucking name. If you wrote a procedural cop show where the child traffickers ran a site called KidFlix, you’d be laughed out of the building for being so on-the-nose.

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    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Depends on your taste for stories and the general atmosphere. I think in better parts of Star Wars EU this would make sense (or it wouldn’t, but the right way, same as in reality).

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  • thecomeback@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    During the investigation, Europol’s analysts from the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) provided intensive operational support to national authorities by analysing thousands of videos.

    I don’t know how you can do this job and not get sick because looking away is not an option

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    • the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This kind of shit is why i noped out of the digital forensics field. I would have killed myself if I had to see that shit everyday.

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    • T156@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You do get sick, and I would be most surprised if they didnt allow people to look away and take breaks/get support as needed.

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      • ziggurat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yes, my wife used to work in the ER, she still tells the same stories over and over again 15 years later, because the memories of the horrible shit she saw doesn’t go away

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      • Rythm@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Indeed, but in my country the psychological support is even mandatory. Furthermore, I know there have been pilots with using ML to go through the videos. When the system detects explicit material, an officer has to confirm it. But it prevents them going through it all day every day for each video. I think Microsoft has also been working on a database with hashes that LEO provides to automatically detect materials that have already been identified. All in all, a gruesome job, but fortunately technique is alleviating the harshest activities bit by bit.

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  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Kidflix sounds like a feature on Nickelodeon. The world is disgusting.

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    • T156@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Or a Netflix for children/video editing app for primary schoolers in the early 2000s/late 1900s.

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  • drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    And it didn’t even require sacrificing encryption huh!

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    • Ronno@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Basically the only reason I read the article is to know if they needed a “backdoor” in encryption, guess the don’t need it, like everyone with a little bit of IT knowledge always told them.

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    • eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      “See we caught these guys without doing it, thank of how many more we can catch if we do! Like all the terrorists America has caught with violating their privacy. …Maybe some day they will.”

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  • j0ester@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They also seized 72,000 illegal videos from the site and personal information of its users, resulting in arrests of 1,400 suspects around the world.

    Wow

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    • Maeve@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      1,393 suspects identified 79 suspects arrested Over 3,000 electronic devices seized 39 children protected

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    • RedPostItNote@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Imagine if humans evolved enough to self-solve the problem of liking this shit.

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  • SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Massive congratulations to Europol and its partners in taking this shit down and putting these perverts away. However, they shouldn’t rest on their laurels. The objective now is to ensure that the distribution of this disgusting material is stopped outright and that no further children are harmed.

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    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The objective now is to ensure that the distribution of this disgusting material is stopped outright and that no further children are harmed.

      Sure, it’ll only cost you every bit of your privacy as governments make illegal and eliminate any means for people to communicate without the eye of Big Brother watching.

      Every anti-privacy measure that governments put forward is always like “We need to be able to track your location in real time, read all of your text messages and see every picture that your phone ever takes so that we can catch the .001% of people who are child predators. Look at how scary they are!

      Why are you arguing against these anti-pedophile laws?! You don’t support child sex predators do you?!”

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      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        This also helps child predators and other traffickers.

        Having backdoors and means to create stalkerware and spy after people in various ways benefits those who have energy to use them and some safety. Lack of truly private communications also benefits them. The victims generally have very little means to ask for help without the criminals knowing that.

        Human trafficking, sexual exploitation, drugs, all these things are high-value crime. They benefit law enforcement getting part of the pie, which means that law enforcement having better ability to surveil communications will not help against them, - the criminals will generally know what is safe and what is not for them, and they will get assistance in such services.

        Surveillance helps against non-violent crime - theft, smuggling, fraud, and usually only low-value operations.

        Surveillance doesn’t help against high-value crime with enough incentive to make connections in law enforcement, and money finds a way, so those connections are made and operations continue.

        Giving more power to law enforcement means law enforcement trading it in relationship with organized crime. To function better, it needs more transparent, clean and accountable organization, not more power.

        But all this is not important, when someone is guilt-shaming you into giving up your full right, you should just tell them to fuck off. This concerns privacy.

        This also concerns guns. The reason it’s hard to find arguments in favor of gun (I mean combat arms, not handguns or hunting rifles) ownership is because successful cases for it are rare (by nature, that’s normal, you don’t need a combat rifle in your life generally, your country also doesn’t need a nuke generally, but it has one and many more), and unsuccessful (bad outcome, but proving the need for gun ownership) are more common, but hard to notice, - it’s every time you obey when you shouldn’t (by that I mean that you harm others by obeying).

        Point being - no person telling you that dignity should be traded for better life has any idea. You are not a criminal for desiring and achieving privacy, you are also not a criminal for doing the same with means to defend yourself, you are also not a criminal for saying all politicians and bureaucrats of your country are shit-swimming jerks and should be fired, and even demanding it. And if someone makes a law telling you differently, that’s not a law, just someone forgot they are not holding Zeus by the beard.

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      • Maeve@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Then end up USA

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  • Gaxsun@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    If that’s the actual splash screen that pops up when you try to access it (no, I’m not going to go to it and check, I don’t want to be on a new and exciting list) then kudos to the person who put that together. Shit goes hard. So do all the agency logos.

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    • quack@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Feds have been stepping up their seized website banner game lately. The one for Genesis Market was pretty cool too.

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  • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Here’s a reminder that you can submit photos of your hotel room to law enforcement, to assist in tracking down CSAM producers. The vast majority of CSAM is produced in hotels. So being able to match furniture, bedspreads, carpet patterns, wallpaper, curtains, etc in the background to a specific hotel helps investigators narrow down when and where it was produced.

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    • thickertoofan@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Nice to know. Thanks.

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    • Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Wouldnt this be so much better if we got hoteliers on board instead of individuals

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      • Geetnerd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
        [deleted]
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    • faberyayo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Thank you for posting this.

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  • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Every now and again I am reminded of my sentiment that the introduction of “media” onto the Internet is a net harm. Maybe 256 dithered color photos like you’d see in Encarta 95 and that’s the maximum extent of what should be allowed. There’s just so much abuse from this kind of shit… despicable.

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    • SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      With that logic, I might as well throw away my computer and phone and go full Uncle Ted.

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    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It is easy to very feel disillusioned with the world, but it is important to remember that there are still good people all around willing to fight the good fight. And it is also important to remember that technology is not inherently bad, it is a neutral object, but people could use it for either good or bad purposes.

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    • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Raping kids has unfortunately been a thing since long before the internet. You could legally bang a 13 year old right up to the 1800s and in some places you still can.

      As recently as the 1980s people would openly advocate for it to be legal, and remove the age of consent altogether. They’d get it in magazines from countries where it was still legal.

      I suspect it’s far less prevalent now than it’s ever been. It’s now pretty much universally seen as unacceptable, which is a good start.

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      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The youngest Playboy model, Eva Ionesco, was only 12 years old at the time of the photo shoot, and that was back in the late 1970’s… It ended up being used as evidence against the Eva’s mother (who was also the photographer), and she ended up losing custody of Eva as a result. The mother had started taking erotic photos (ugh) of Eva when she was only like 5 or 6 years old, under the guise of “art”. It wasn’t until the Playboy shoot that authorities started digging into the mother’s portfolio.

        But also worth noting that the mother still holds copyright over the photos, and has refused to remove/redact/recall photos at Eva’s request. The police have confiscated hundreds of photos for being blatant CSAM, but the mother has been uncooperative in a full recall. Eva has sued the mother numerous times to try and get the copyright turned over, which would allow her to initiate the recall instead.

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    • deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Let’s get rid of the printing press because it can be used for smut. /s

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      • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        great pointless strawman. nice contribution.

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    • adhdplantdev@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think it just shows all the hideousness of humanity and all it’s glory in a way that we have never confronted before. It’s shatters the illusion the humanity has grown from its barbaric ways.

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  • HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    1.8 million users and they only caught 1000?

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    • Maeve@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      79

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      • HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        79 arrested, but it seems they found the identity of a thousand or so.

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    • otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I imagine it’s easier to catch uploaders than viewers.

      It’s also probably more impactful to go for the big “power producers” simultaneously and quickly before word gets out and people start locking things down.

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      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It also likely gives you the best $ spent/children protected rate, because you know the producers have children they are abusing which may or may not be the case for a viewer.

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      • HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yeah, I don’t suspect they went after any viewers, only uploaders.

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  • muhyb@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Wow, with such a daring name as well. Fucking disgusting.

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    • Siegfried@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I once saw a list of defederated lemmy instances. In most cases, and I mean like 95% of them, the reason of thedefederation was pretty much in the instance name. CP everywhere. Humanity is a freaking mistake.

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      • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I regularly see people on Lemmy advocating for pedophilia, at LEAST every 3 months as a popular, upvoted stance. I argue with them in my history

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      • drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        You’re just seeing “survivor’s bias” (as nasty as that sounds in this case) not a general representation.

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      • Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Isnit not encouraging that it is ostracised and removed from normal people. There are horrible parts of everything in nature, life is good despite those people and because of the rest combatting their shittiness

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  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    On average, around 3.5 new videos were uploaded to the platform every hour, many of which were previously unknown to law enforcement.

    Absolutely sick and vile. I hope they honey potted the site and that the arrests keep coming.

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    • blazeknave@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I just got ill

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  • Lightsong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    1.8m users, how the hell did they ran that website for 3 years?

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    • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      it says “this hidden site”, meaning it was a site on the dark web. It probably took them awhile to figure out were the site was located so they could shut it down.

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      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        it says “this hidden site”, meaning it was a site on the dark web.

        Not just on the dark web (which technically is anything not indexed by search engines) but hidden sites are specifically a TOR thing (though Freenet/Hyphanet has something similar but it’s called something else). Usually a TOR hidden site has a URL that ends in .onion and the TOR protocol has a structure for routing .onion addresses.

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    • danny161@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s unfortunately (not really sure) probably the fault of Germanys approach to that. It is usually not taking these websites down but try to find the guys behind it and seize them. The argument is: they will just use a backup and start a “KidFlix 2” or sth like that. Some investigations show, that this is not the case and deleting is very effective. Also the German approach completely ignores the victim side. They have to deal with old men masturbating to them getting raped online. Very disturbing…

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      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        They have to deal with old men masturbating to them getting raped online.

        The moment it was posted to wherever they were going to have to deal with that forever. It’s not like they can ever know for certain that every copy of it ever made has been deleted.

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      • Maeve@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        And yet there are cases like Kim Dotcom, Snowden, Manning, Assange…

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      • drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I used to work in netsec and unfortunately government still sucks at hiring security experts everywhere.

        That being said hiring here is extremely hard - you need to find someone with below market salary expectation working on such ugly subject. Very few people can do that. I do believe money fixes this though. Just pay people more and I’m sure every European citizen wouldn’t mind 0.1% tax increase for a more effective investigation force.

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      • recall519@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        This feels like one of those things where couch critics aren’t qualified. There’s a pretty strong history of three letter agencies using this strategy successfully in other organized crime industries.

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      • TheProtagonist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I think you are mixing here two different aspects of this and of similar past cases. I the past there was often a problem with takedowns of such sites, because german prosecutors did not regard themselves as being in charge of takedowns, if the servers were somewhere overseas. Their main focus was to get the admins and users of those sites and to get them into jail.

        In this specific case they were observing this platform (together with prosecutors from other countries in an orchestrated operation) to gather as much data as possible about the structure, the payment flows, the admins and the users of this before moving into action and getting them arrested. The site was taken down meanwhile.

        If you blow up and delete)such a darknet service immediately immediately upon discovery, you may get rid of it (temporarily) but you might not catch many of the people behind it.

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      • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Honestly, if the existing victims have to deal with a few more people masturbating to the existing video material and in exchange it leads to fewer future victims it might be worth the trade-off but it is certainly not an easy choice to make.

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  • clearedtoland@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    With everything going on right now, the fact that I still feel physically sick reading things like this tells me I haven’t gone completely numb yet. Just absolutely repulsive.

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    • unphazed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I know I’m not heartless yet because I am still traumatized by the brick in the window video…

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      • dharmacurious@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Gonna ruin me, but seconding. Brick in the window video?

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      • BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I’ll probably regret asking, but I’m out of the loop and insatiably curious.

        Brick in the window video?

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      • Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Fuck. Don’t make me think about that video. Fuck. Shit.

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  • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Fuck man. I used to use a program called “Kidpix” when I was a kid. It was like ms paint but with fun effects and sounds.

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    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Oh no!

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    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Omg I remember Kidpix! It was great!

      This… not so much.

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    • Deceptichum@quokk.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Image

      I used to love the dynamite tool!

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      • dan@upvote.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I loved the explosion sound, and the “oh no” when you click the undo button. I have the Windows versions of KidPix on CD somewhere.

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  • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Does it feel odd to anyone else that a platform for something this universally condemned in any jurisdiction can operate for 4 years, with a catchy name clearly thought up by a marketing person, its own payment system and nearly six figure number of videos? I mean even if we assume that some of those 4 years were intentional to allow law enforcement to catch as many perpetrators as possible this feels too similar to fully legal operations in scope.

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