Firstly, I’ve deleted my formerly Twitter account. It’s been shuttered for months, and I was only keeping it to avoid impersonation. Given what’s going on there now, I decided cutting user numbers, even by one, matters more.
It’s not just about bikinis. An under-reported aspect of the way digital images are being manipulated is users are depicting women and children as victims of physical violence, bloodied and bruised. In some cases these deep-fakes are being used to threaten and intimidate.
There’s also the legal aspect. In the UK possessing CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is a strict liability criminal offence, with a prison sentence of 2-3 years. Viewing it on your phone counts. No proof that you sought the material is required. People can be and have been convicted after receiving unsolicited images. Don’t be confident your own detailed safeguards will protect you from seeing CSAM on X. Months ago, the last time I checked my locked, highly curated, all tweets deleted, placeholder account, the first thing I saw was a graphic photo of a child who had been shot in the head.
From now on, anyone claiming to be me on X is a fake.
For the avoidance of doubt, I interact with people on social media on Facebook, Bluesky and Mastodon.
I have placeholder accounts on Tumblr, Instagram and Dreamwidth which I rarely use.
Which brings me to my second point. Another surge of fake social media accounts claiming to be famous authors is currently underway. Fraudsters are contacting writers with initial expressions of (spurious) support, swiftly followed by offers of paid-for (and non-existent) services. I’ve also seen reports of these solicitations being emailed direct, and they can be insidiously plausible, thanks to bloody generative AI.
If you ever get an approach by direct message or email, which you have no reason to expect, from someone claiming to be me, feel free to get in touch to verify it. I’d want know if this sort of thing is going on.
Right. Let’s go and do something much more pleasant, now that’s done.
