Proper Gander – Anti-social media

With all the opportunities which social media offers us in the ability to communicate instantly with people anywhere, it’s depressing how much it is used to harm others. ‘Sextortion’ is one example, being a type of online blackmail which is the ‘fastest growing scam affecting teenagers globally’. The number of instances reported to the FBI in America had more than doubled in three years to 55,000 in 2024. In the UK, the National Crime Agency receives 110 notifications each month. In a case of sextortion, someone creates a fake profile on a social media platform such as Snapchat or Instagram and uses it to contact their target, often a teenage boy. Thinking they are communicating with an interested girl, the victim is manipulated into sending naked photos of themselves. Then, the scammer drops the pretence and threatens to share the pictures with the boy’s family and friends unless they send money. One victim was 16 year-old Evan Boettler, who was driven to end his own life by the pressure. His story was the focus of BBC Three’s documentary Blackmailed: The Sextortion Killers. Reporter Tir Dhondy meets Evan’s parents in Missouri, America, devastated by his loss. The identity of the person who scammed Evan isn’t known, although the IP address of the phone they used is found, located in Nigeria. Tir travels to the country, which we are told is the main source of cybercrime in Africa.

In Nigeria, online scammers are known as ‘yahoo boys’, who operate in groups under a leader, some of whom have become very rich. Their workplaces are ‘hustle kingdoms’, a grandiose name for what we see as just a sparse room in a grim hut. Here, the aspiring ‘gang-stars’ as one of them calls himself, sit with mobile phones, messaging duped teenagers thousands of miles away. Several ‘yahoo boys’ agree to speak with Tir, and are surprisingly open about their methods and dismissive of those they con. One says he doesn’t feel bad because he needs the money, and he and others think that the people they target in the West can spare the funds demanded. The scammers are distanced from their victims in several ways: by communicating by phone across continents, through the disparity in wealth, and also by how they are alienated enough to see others just as sources of money, without considering the impact of being blackmailed. While the actions of the ‘yahoo boys’ are reprehensible, these can be explained by how their mindsets and attitudes have been shaped by their circumstances and their culture. Tir accompanies one of them when he visits a priest to buy a ritual which he hopes will bring him more income. This involves him killing and eating a pigeon, one of six or seven rituals the priest says he performs each day, for a price. The priest’s lack of enthusiasm in the ceremony could suggest he doesn’t believe in it himself, meaning he would be scamming a scammer.

The programme doesn’t analyse the conditions in which sextortion arises, dwelling more on the institutions which are supposed to deal with the issue. The representative of the Nigerian state’s fraud and cybercrime police who Tir meets downplays the extent of sextortion and admits that investors are less likely to be attracted to the country if it’s thought of as having high rates of such offences. Tir doesn’t find the person who blackmailed Evan Boettler. Nigeria’s telecommunications provider Glo says they no longer have records of their phone number, and the police’s investigation is slow. Evan’s parents are frustrated by Instagram’s owner Meta not releasing more details which would help with inquiries without a court order, which they believe is convenient for Meta because it would be incriminated by this information. Brandon Guffey, who lost his son Gavin to suicide in similar circumstances to Evan, says Meta has acted negligently and is cynical about its head Mark Zuckerberg’s apology and the ‘PR stunt’ of it pulling 63,000 ‘sextortionists’ accounts on one day. Brandon tried to sue Meta but was scuppered by the law. In the United States, Section 230 is a piece of legislation which generally means that platforms which host online content aren’t held responsible for material posted on them by other people. Arturo Bejar, an ex-employee of Meta, says that the company doesn’t want to know about the extent of sextortion because it doesn’t want to deal with the matter. Social media companies, reluctant to add more safeguards, are ‘unwilling to act because it would harm profits’. Brandon says it’s ‘ridiculous’ that the world’s richest companies aren’t accountable, but the economic weight of these entities gives them this power, backed up by the state through regulations such as Section 230.

The documentary describes how social media companies avoid addressing and highlighting sextortion because this would adversely affect their own interests (a similar attitude to that of the Nigerian authorities). Text statements from Snapchat and Meta at the end of the programme attempt to rebuke some of the criticisms, perhaps recognising that sextortion could damage their profitability. Even if social media platforms introduced more safeguards, or if Section 230 was repealed, this wouldn’t remove what causes sextortion and other fraud. Money compels the issue, most obviously in the amounts demanded by scammers, and behind this is the poverty which contributes to them using this approach for an income. Money, ultimately in the guise of profits, also motivates the owners of the social media companies, with the laws they are supposed to work within being shaped by what is deemed financially advantageous. As with everything it underpins, the money system has tainted social media, creating problems like sextortion which the institutions around it aren’t in a position to resolve.

MIKE FOSTER

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