I think it was about 30 years ago that the various search, affinity, and discussion sites were effective in making it hard to find Pro-Anorexia materials that would have encouraged children to develop eating disorders.
All sorts of bad stuff was still out there in easy abundance, but Pro-Anorexia was happily rare. In at least one dimension, our children were being protected.
Investigative reporting by Futurism has shown that is now easily available again to the users of Character.AI. And that there are much scarier bots available to children there.
I don’t know what to write at this point.
As a risk-aware, risk-averse, easily worried, tech-savvy adult, I didn’t give any thought to this class of risk.
I am embarrassed.
