This is a very tragic incident and I'm very sorry this happened to these women. I hope this person will face severe punishment if he is found guilty in a court - of course we should wait for the legal outcome of this process but I don't doubt that this actually happened. But I don't know why this incident is so surprising, to be honest. Predators always used the internet to their advantage, they've been doing that since the internet was created. The articles that are linked below were written over 10 years ago(!) and they talk about the exact same issue, about predators on the internet, an issue by the way that doesn't just affect SS but websites like Facebook, Myspace and Youtube as well:
If you don't know what it means to “facebook” someone, then odds are you don't have any young people in your house who do it all the time. It means to look for details about a person on any of the booming Internet sites where people post details about themselves. It's hugely popular, but police...
www.nbcnews.com
web.archive.org
Keep in mind that this forum has over 17'000(!) registered members, so yeah - there are gonna be bad apples among us, that's simply a statistical fact. But this isn't just an issue that only affects SS per se, it's an issue that affects the whole internet as a medium, as you can see in the linked articles above. The anonymity that comes with the internet is the perfect condition for predators to roam freely and do nasty things, that's why we should condition people to be more careful when meeting up with strangers,
especially on a website like this that contains so many vulnerable people in desperate situation. It's why I'm skeptical of catching the bus with a partner in general, especially when it's done with a stranger from this forum, not only for legal reasons but also because you don't know the real intention of that other person - even when that person is a member of this forum, there is still a slight chance that they're looking for trouble.
We made very clear that you need to be careful if you meet up with someone that's a member of this forum, but once again, that applies to the internet in general, not just to this website. This also applies to Facebook, Tindr, Instagram, any social network really - there are creeps on
all platforms that allow personal and deeply intimate interaction between humans, that's the nature of these apps. We don't know the real intentions of people that register in this forum but if we find out that members have predatory intentions, we ban them immediately.
I've met with people in this community in real life and it's been a great experience so far. And I know plenty of real people, long-term friends that I've talked to a lot, that are authentic and amazing people. We shouldn't fall for fearmongering and fall into some kind of paranoia just because of this one incident. You can still meet great people and create lovely friendships in this community, you just need to be careful during that process. So yeah, there are creeps but you can avoid them with common sense. If someone is harassing you, threatening you, stalking you in any way, report them to use and they'll be banned asap.
But don't let this incident make you believe that there is a systemic issue with predators on this website. There are plenty of people that would love to make you believe this and this talking point about predators in this forum is gonna be the narrative of plenty of groups that oppose the pro-choice purpose of this website (and it was the narrative of people like Jackie Bieber back in 2019) because they're gonna use
any ammo they can possibly find to smear and slander us, in the hopes of taking us down eventually.
Here is a thread with useful information to protect your privacy. Please read it. You should take measures to protect yourself.
www.thescottishsun.co.uk
