Teen rescued after showing domestic violence hand signal known on TikTok
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
- repeating that signal - looking quite distressed
and it might be useful.
When does anyone make that hand motion? I never have in my life.
This particular signal was also created during Covid lockdowns and was intended to be something you do to a camera, because you don't have any opportunity to see people in person and ask for help. So you raise your palm towards the camera and then close it into a fist.
you could make this signal with your hand down by your side while being "walked" to a location while in public. it would be much less noticable by the one doing the taking than trying to get people to do it in an "upright" position.
I think you're right that this hand signal is not ideal for "I am currently being kidnapped by the person right next to me", despite this success story.
> yes, thanks. i understand the signal. however, if you've ever made a "wrong" fist, you've made this signal.
You still don't seem to understand the signal. It is not simply a wrong fist.
The silent signal part is only needed if you're in need of assistance. You can use your words in most other situations.
> Police say the teenager told investigators that she traveled with the man through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. Authorities allege she had been attempting to get motorists’ attention to call 911.
Apparently it didn't work very fast.
> The Signal for Help was introduced by the Canadian Women's Foundation on April 14, 2020.
Behavior change & language development take time.
ASL for “help me” would cross the TikTok culture gap.
I think the bigger news is that the common opinion is that TikTok is useless, and this provides a rare counterexample. :)
The description doesn't say that at all; it only discusses domestic violence and, if you see the signal, 'check in' with the person signaling. Presumably, if they were talking about kidnapping or hostage situations, they would suggest calling the police.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/27/us/florida-woman-escape-n...
Unfortunately, typical for HN - a bit odd for a community built around innovative startups. Look at the top comment for almost every discussion, a smarter-than-thou takedown of whatever the OP says. I wish the mods would automatically move that comment to the bottom.
Rationality is achieved when one merely makes rational arguments following some axiom or assumption. But it says nothing about the reasonableness of the axiom or assumption per se. It would seem that some folks employ faulty assumptions in supposedly rational discussions, assuming that they are winning the debate (whether it is a debate or not) without considering their blind spots.
We might accept some assumptions for the sake of argument, but that doesn't take them off the table for unpicking once the main argument is made.
They almost never seem like it to me. A suggestion: Look for whether they provide evidence, not just claims that anyone can type.
It would be really great if HN provided multiple different moderation systems, so everyone could select a moderation algorithm that suited them better.
To be effective they must be widely understood and conspicuous. If they are well understood and conspicuous, then the attacker will punish the victim for attempting to make them.
Attackers will surely see articles like this and will prevent victims from putting their hands anywhere near the glass in future.
It worked this time because we're in a local optimum of sorts where enough community members understand the signals to help and enough attackers don't know about the signal to prevent it from being made. However, as community consciousness of these signals grows (through articles such as this) attackers will get wise to the practice. Hence, they're self-defeating.
I'm sure in a restricted set of circumstance this may help people (as it did in this story), but I sincerely doubt it'd lead to a material increase in kidnapped people being liberated.
It'd certainly be less effective than other interventions such as cracking down on people trafficking networks or poverty reduction programmes.
The expressiveness of hand gestures (in general) is quite limited and any gesture used for covert communication must make a tradeoff between conspicuousness to the public and conspicuousness to the attacker. This limitation restricts the situations in which they can be made and results in gestures that could be easily dismissed or otherwise misunderstood and thus limit their utility.
Clearly you've not met many sign language speakers. Or Italians.
This is a perfectly cromulent covert hand gesture. It has high coding entropy - I've literally never once seen someone make this gesture (outside of videos demonstrating it). Fingerspelling is not remotely similar since it's a sequence of codes in rapid succession.
Sure was material to this chick
* kidnapper distracted by other things
* kidnapper distracted by having been on the road long enough to be spending all their energy on "not falling asleep" and "paying attention to the road ahead"
* victim in back seat, partially hidden
* kidnapper has temporarily left victim alone in a place they feel confident flight is unlikely
If it starts to become too popular then once stories start spreading of victims who managed to escape despite their kidnapper noticing them using this sign, then new signs will be suggested and circulated. Asking a bartender/waitress if they can make a particular (nonexistant) drink. Blinking in a certain cadence. Crossing your arms and tapping your upper arm five times. Whatever. Language evolves.
I've been in the women's bathroom in bars and seen signs posted out of view from outside that say "if you need help escaping from the person you are with, say this innocuous but specific phrase to the staff". This was long before TikTok existed, and maybe before this gesture existed - I dunno, maybe I just never got shown it.
With regards to the bar examples, they may work in a constrained context where the victim is familiar with the venue. They wouldn't work in the case of victim being transported around under the control of their attacker.
There is a sweet spot between "enough people know what this signal means for it to be worth using" and "so many people know this that my adversary knows it too". The signal this kid used may be about to cross the upper threshold soon, but it worked for her.
Surreptitious and obscured communication channels have been being created and getting detected for most of human history. Look at the continuing cycle of teenage subcultures creating slang to perform the dual function of marking a member of the group and obscuring one's plans from one's parents; look at Thieves' Cant; look at histories and manuals of spycraft. And those spycraft books will probably have suggestions on what to do if you're in a situation where signals just aren't viable, too; signals are one tool.
Yes, the attacker can strip-search the victim for smartphones and GPS trackers and then tie them down in the trunk, but the game is getting harder for kidnappers.
These hand signals only make sense in cases where the attacker already has physical (though not mental) control over the victim and the crime is not immediately obvious to witnesses.
I think this case would actually be one of the easiest for the attacker to prevent with prior knowledge of the hand signal. Most people hardly ever look at the occupants of passing cars and only subset of them would have the knowledge and presence of mind to interpret the signal and not dismiss it anyway. So, a victim would have to have their fist pressed up against the glass for an extended period of time. The attacker, sitting right next to the victim, would catch that in their peripheral vision pretty quickly.
I also take offence to OP's suggestion that reasoned arguments critiquing the practice be 'automatically' moved to the bottom of the thread. As though such arguments can never be made in good faith.
Yes, there are clearly some situations where it has worked in the past, which is a good thing. But, we shouldn't start a massive public awareness campaign and create courses on it in schools because its aggregate effect would likely be small relative to other possible interventions.
Now, you may argue that you never suggested such a thing and that'd be a fair retort. However, then what is the potential aggregate impact such a programme? I'd argue very small for the reasons I've outlined previously. So, it be better to raise awareness and lobby for interventions to kidnapping and human trafficking with proven efficacy.
If you are at the point where you cannot even get your hands near where other people can see them, your signal bandwidth to the outside world is likely already severely curtailed. As in, you are probably locked in a basement. I don't think this is meant to address that severe of a human trafficking/abuse situation.
It's true that attackers can take precautions against this, but that also makes their attack harder to carry out.
Careful with that. [1]
Then, you could test that opinion by writing a respectful comment to the top comment. :)
"In the studio today we have someone who has been studying this topic at a reputable institution for decades. And to argue a different side we have someone who only learned about this topic ten minutes ago but nonetheless can be relied upon to have strong contrary opinions, no matter the subject."
Of course the reputable person could be wrong but listening to the guy spouting BS is not going to help discern the truth, which is almost certainly not anywhere in whatever "middle" was conjured up by the BS.
It certainly helps for some deep technical articles, but when it comes to broader topics, HN has become grumpy and old.
It's cool to hate.
To write something constructive takes thought and creativity (as in, to 'create' something).
("Agreeing to something while acknowledging its flaws" isn't the alternative.)
Orchestration? "Just use some bash/perl, no need for this k8s craziness"
On a thread about Micro - a new cli text editor? "Just use vim."
And of course, the OG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
I treat those comments as reality check that lets me question my own stance and views. Afterall we all have different opinions, and mine might not be right.
Unfortunately, this comment here, and the fact that it was pinned to the top of the subthread, is sort of a variant of the same thing. I'll mark it off topic now.
“Grumpy HN users unfairly criticize life-saving hand sign” becomes “Insightful HN users correctly identify hand sign as worthless”. Vindication!
[0]https://www.facebook.com/laurelcountysheriff/posts/256143486...
Did I write anything about bad journalism?
But hey, this is Guardian, so why not go with the clickbaity title and ride the gimmicky TikTok trends?
This event has nothing to do with TikTok. Hand signals are not new and any medium of communication can be used to propagate their meaning. TikTok is certainly not the only medium by which this particular hand signal has propagated, and might not be the most significant force behind its adoption.
Why was TikTok mentioned so many times? Just to draw clicks on the headline?
Given that the press didn't do much to sway people's opinions its now being reported on based on the content it provides rather than the platform itself.
Can't say for sure, but I'm guessing the police included that because either the 911 caller or victim (or both) said they learned the gesture from TikTok.
You say that, but if you where using tiktok you’d be one of the roughly billion people who didn’t know about the signal a month ago but then recently learned about it. Trust me, Tiktok was the absolutely major force behind this knowledge becoming widespread, and it’s perfectly reasonable that it’s mentioned. Just like Gangnam style coverage mentioned YouTube. It’s not about clicks or some infatuation with the platforms, it’s just objectively the case that these major platforms have an extreme reach and that’s worth including in your coverage. Especially since many readers like yourself don’t understand just how influential the platform has become, because they haven’t known about it for more than a year or so.
So my theory is tik tok is paying some company for that buzz.
As a loosely related note, there has been problems in the past where people come up with meanings for hand gestures without knowing the signed language of the region they are in, which leads to people misunderstanding something a person is signing as something completely different. Although probably not a problem in this case, just something to consider if you ever are so inclined to make a manual language.
If anyone was curious in ASL this is basically "B -> M", not that that was on purpose, just a different way this could be interpreted.
I'm so glad that the signal worked in this case, but you're absolutely correct: the problem with clandestine signals like this is that they need to be somewhat widely known to be effective, but if they become too widely known they become ineffective and even dangerous (since the bad actor would likely know the signal and intent).
I've heard stories about prevented tragedies via "code word" drink orders at bars -- maybe that tactic could be more widely applied (bars, restaurants, hotels, gas stations, etc.)
Source (as an example): https://twitter.com/iizzzzzi/status/788387942242914305
In this case, he was driving and presumably looking ahead 99% of the time.
What if an abuser learns about the signal?
As the signal is shared and becomes known by the public, there is a risk that an abuser might learn about it. People in abusive situations are also often closely monitored by the person harming them, and they may not always feel safe enough to use the signal.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone facing abuse. Everyone faces their own unique circumstance. The Signal for Help is one tool some people may be able to use, some of the time, to indicate they need help without leaving a digital trace.
It is important that people reach out for support if and when they feel ready, and they should do it in the ways that feel safest for them. People supporting them should be ready to help without judgement, and they should follow the lead of the person who needs help.
Mainly names, no?
"Entombment" is spelled with -bm-, but the b is not pronounced. (As is also true of the root word "tomb".)
Really? I'm not deaf, but I did take 3 semesters of ASL, and knew a lot of deaf people. In my experience, fingerspelling is incredibly common.
It isn't that people spell everything, but is very common to spell a very specific word, especially for something technical, that one of your following signs will represent. You might spell "Macbook M1", and then use the sign for computer in the rest of the conversation.
I've also found that many people that weren't born deaf, but went deaf later, or that had hearing parents that didn't really help them, often don't know ASL well. It was common for someone to not recognize a sign and the other person would spell out what it was.
A funny oddity about spelling and the deaf. You might (at least I did) think that since they spell things out far more often than we do in spoken English that they'd know how to spell well. That is generally not the case unless the person was raised by hearing people.
I knew a couple where the husband was CODA (child of a deaf adult, both parents) but could hear/speak, and the wife was deaf but was raised by hearing parents. She actually could spell well, but he couldn't, and that was very atypical.
Often times, just like when reading, one may not notice every single letter in a given word, but with the sequence of letters, autocorrect, and context, the meaning is usually clear.
It never occurred to me that this could apply to ASL.
edit: https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/
Regarding the person's expressions, it's common in ASL to employ very dramatic facial expressions to assist and augment the signs themselves to help the "listener" arrive at the correct understanding and feeling.
(1)https://www.babysignlanguage.com/dictionary/poop/ (2)https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=5860
What? It's a common euphemism for "bowel movement"; one of the most likely things to be spoken as a letter sequence rather than a word.
> Does the Signal for Help stand for something in a sign language?
> The Signal For Help is not meant to refer to any words, letters, or ideas in American Sign Language (ASL) or other sign languages. It is designed as a single hand motion someone can make during a video call to silently communicate they need support. Deaf community members were consulted on the Signal for Help prior to the launch of the campaign to check in about using this hand gesture.
Also, they went through like 4 states before someone noticed. And that also required that she "looked distressed". A lot of happenstance here.
The main problem with domestic violence, and why it's an unsolvable issue, is that the victim does not want to leave (probably because of sunk costs or similar). If someone is prevented from leaving, it's kidnapping.
I was partly confused on first reading because having misread the title I thought the signal was made and recognised on a TikTok video. Whereas actually - especially since it's a more widely known (apparently) signal, introduced by the Canadian Women's Foundation - this story has nothing to do with TikTok or social media whatsoever.