Tag: children

TikTok Leads Youth to Porn?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

As an expert on business ethics, each day is another dreary ride into greed and evil. Today is Friday and just another day in the exploration of greed when we find that an internet platform leads children to porn. Yes, just another day.

TikTok leads teenagers to porn after a few clicks. The internet being the cesspool that it is, we shouldn’t be too surprised but I am. What surprises me is that this was in “restricted” mode.

That’s right. The fake accounts used in the study were not just teenagers, they were supposed to be operating in restricted mode but still after a few clicks they began leading these example children to adult topics and pornography. A parent doing due diligence could be fooled be this thing and that was probably the intent.

Let me get the news article that leads to my content out of the way as well as the usual quote.

(Internet Porn breaching the home’s defenses.)

The article is called – TikTok ‘directs child accounts to pornographic content within a few clicks’

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/03/tiktok-child-accounts-pornographic-content-accessible

Global Witness set up fake accounts using a 13-year-old’s birth date and turned on the video app’s “restricted mode”, which limits exposure to “sexually suggestive” content.

Researchers found TikTok suggested sexualised and explicit search terms to seven test accounts that were created on clean phones with no search history.

The terms suggested under the “you may like” feature included “very very rude skimpy outfits” and “very rude babes” – and then escalated to terms such as “hardcore pawn [sic] clips”. For three of the accounts the sexualised searches were suggested immediately.

The article was written by Dan Milmo writing for the online version of the Guardian.

The inevitable question here is why would anyone do this. The money is very good. Teenagers have a lot of spending power and these villains want to tap into it.

How many ways can I say that this terribly wrong and people shouldn’t make money this way? Close to infinity. So moral persuasion is useless. If you want to stop children watching and buying porn, people have to pay fines and go to jail.

There is no other choice. We’ve had the kind words and tried to reason with them and yet here we find a process designed to fool a cautious parent but still get the child as a customer. That speaks to a massive amount of intent. They are playing the government and the people of this nation for fools pretending to regulate content while building a Swiss cheese of holes that any child can get through to get to the supposedly regulated content. It is not right.

Let me in closing state the facts about online regulation when it comes to the United States. We are failing as a regulator of the internet. The EU and Australia have long ago taken the lead in online regulation and we should be following their lead.

James Alan Pilant

Another Example of the Cruelty Being the Point

On By southwerkIn business ethics

https://www.yahoo.com/news/critics-slam-ex-trump-wh-053453611.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-trump-aide-slammed-evil-142918279.html

An example of a man admitting committing a crime. Most unusual.

Recently some Republicans have been making news by denying children food benefits, rolling back child labor laws, killing their pet (more on this later) and just general cruelty. Apparently in the strange world of Republican politics the more mean and cruel an act is – the more political points it is worth.

Today’s example of cruelty just for points come from a fellow named John McEntee, who has posted a video of himself bragging about his acts of cruelty. Let me quote from the first article referenced above:

“So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car so when a homeless person asks for money, then I give him like a fake $5 bill, so I feel good about myself, they feel good,” said McEntee in a clip with the caption “Just a joke. Everyone calm down #fyp.” “And then, when they go to use it, they get arrested so I’m actually like helping clean up the community. You know, getting them off the street.”

You may note that Mr. McEntee says this is just a joke, and everyone should calm down. I write about ethics and morality and I am not calming down. Apparently he thinks that passing counterfeit money is funny, that homelessness is funny, that abusing homeless people is funny and that jailing homeless people is funny. Based on this video, I do not believe that the world of comedy has found any talent here.

Generally awful people doing awful things keep their acts to themselves and wisely so. Back when I was teaching college I warned my students the people broadcast who they were all the time, and that when someone admits or even worse brags about their evil or foolish acts, you should believe them. McEntee says it is just a joke. Really?

From the second article above:

Under federal statute 18 section 471, it is a federal crime to intently “defraud, falsely makes, forges, counterfeits, or alters any obligation or other security of the United States”. That includes currency, treasury notes, reserve notes and more.

So, what do you think? Is this crime funny? Did you laugh or are you like me appalled at this pitiful disgusting conduct?

James Alan Pilant

A World with More Men than Women (via Hwaairfan’s Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I like the current one where there are more women than men. But that, of course, is merely my personal preference, I have no practical rationale.

There is something vaguely funny about radiation causing more male births. I’m sure there are a number of good jokes in there. However, it does demonstrate that our genetic structure gets played with when radiation changes in level.

Read the article. It’s fun.

James Pilant

A World with More Men than Women A World with More Men than Women The idea might seem quite appealing to some men, especially those who have unprocessed overriding issues to deal with, however the likelihood of that happening, even in the short term seems to be the findings of scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany. They analyzed data on population U.S. and 39 European countries for the period 1975 to 2007, and found that this is in fact a trend. As women live long … Read More

via Hwaairfan's Blog

Cross Stitches (via Achilles & Aristotle)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

Here we are talking about Montaigne again! (I discussed another Montaigne blog post a week or so ago.) There is always an undercurrent of classicism in the United States. I have been a fan of Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books project since I was 14 and read his masterpiece, How to Read a Book. Years later when the book was put in the discards, I bought it for a few cents and it is still a part of my library.

I like and appreciate this kind of talk, this kind of reading. Once these deep waters are explored, a person’s thoughts are never quite the same. I remember Adler talked about this and he said that after you have read great books you never need to fear boredom when you are alone. I think that’s true.

This fellow writes intelligent essays. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

James Pilant

Cross Stitches I’ve subscribed to Montaigne’s Essais on dailylit.com which breaks him up into comparatively bitesized chunks. Still the discovery that there are 426 daily episodes to look forward to sometimes feels a long haul. I’m up to episode 62. Some days I skim him, some days I ignore him completely. But sometimes he discusses something with himself, in his meandering way, which speaks to my own day. Whenever I’m close to cancelling my daily dose of Montai … Read More

via Achilles & Aristotle

Suffer the Little Children to Starve

On By southwerkIn Uncategorized

Business Ethics is a subject deeply concerned with a variety of moral approaches to problems. Often dogmatic simple solutions are not effective all the time. The United States is said to be one of the countries in which the free market is enshrined as a “successful” doctrine. Successful it may well be in some contexts but one size does not fit all and there are problems resistant to the free market.

Last year, nearly 50 million American had trouble getting enough to eat. The Washington Post then says that one in four children in America is part of this group. That’s right, the richest nation on earth, richer beyond the ambition of countless empires of history can’t feed its population. This nation has 269 billionaires. Yet, 1/6 of the population has problems getting enough to eat. More than 35 million Americans get food stamps. More than thirty million children get government subsidized school lunches.

We can do better than this. We have a responsibility to make sure every American gets enough to eat. Yes, that includes the homeless and the “unworthy.” It might be said that if we encourage people to succeed in the free market they will solve their hunger problems through hard work and ambition. It has long been an ambition of mine to see new born babes fight their way into important corporate positions. I want to see eight and nine year olds compete with adults in a difficult job market. That will make them tough.

Well, don’t worry about them, the free market cures all. We just have to give it time.

The record is unmistakable: If you seek economic growth, social justice and human dignity, the free-market system is the way to go. It would be a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis to undermine 60 years of success. The Wall Street Journal

If human dignity is not to have enough to eat.

So how should one respond to issues such as severe poverty, hunger, and healthcare? I would suggest that it comes down to education, education, and more education. An individual must educate him or herself first and then educate others. Ayn Rand’s philosophy holds that historical trends are the inescapable product of philosophy. Fighting for the victory of ideas can defeat widely held ideologies that threaten liberty, private property rights, economic and individual freedom. From the BLOG, Free Market Physician
If we educate people, they won’t be hungry. (Damn those children. They just won’t get a college education until they get older. Apparently they lack ambition.)


All of us are the inheritors of this freeing of the market and the resulting technological revolution. The automobiles people drive, the televisions they watch, the movies they see, the cell phones they answer, the planes they fly, and — exemplified by Microsoft — the computers they use, all owe their development and availability to the free market. At a more basic level, we can best see the operation of the free market in the availability of an amazing variety of cheap foods for the poor and lower middle class. An American supermarket is a cornucopia of agricultural wealth, with choices of fruits, vegetables, meats, cereals, breads, wines, and so on from many areas of the United States and countries of the world. Similarly, department and hardware stores shelve, hang, and display a wide variety of goods. To see the results of freedom, you need only shop in any of democracy’s stores.  On The Incredible Utopia That is the Free Market, R.J. Rummel

There isn’t any hunger. We live in Utopia. Isn’t it wonderful?