Hacker News Reader

Comment by SuperNinKenDo | Hacker News Reader

Interesting times. It sounds as though schools have totally failed to reckon with the reality if this, at least in this case. A 10 day suspension is a pretty wild punishment for what amounts to sexually harassing pre-teen girls.

The mention at the end that this carries a heftier punishment than revenge porn is pretty interesting. It really does make you think. And the fact that it was Taylor Swift AI images that got lawmakers moving on this is kinda insane. But maybe that's not actually the case, and just a connection being drawn by media outlets who wants Taylor Swift mentioned somewhere in their article for SEO.

View on HN

> A 10 day suspension is a pretty wild punishment for what amounts to sexually harassing pre-teen girls.

Wild as in too extreme or too lenient?

I was kicked out of middle school for having a kickass butterfly knife in my backpack. I forgot it was there, I had got it that weekend at the flea market from Nazi Bill. My bag fell on the floor, the sound of metal my teacher heard made her think it was a gun. This was in then 90's.

I'm curious if 10 days is too lenient too.

Things change. Why would you give them a harsh punishment for what I'm sure the middle-schoolers thought was a silly prank. Just optics?

Two things here.

Sexual harassment is never a prank.

Suspension isn't a punishment for the kid, it's to remove them from disturbing other children.

Just to continue this: it is the school's responsibility to ensure their students (and faculty) are safe. It is not their responsibility to punish anyone beyond that scope. If there is to be punitive punishment that would come from the legal system.

Though, personally, it'll be interesting to see what crime was committed in the making of the content. To me this sort of behavior isn't unexpected. It's yet another example of technology outpacing geriatric capacity.

Interesting that I got downvoted, and I completely agree with you.

If there was something bad commited here then the legal system should be able to hand out punishment for "revenge porn" or sexual harassment, or whatever they feel fits the crime.

But suspension is not punishment. Shitty kids will still see this as extra holiday to cause trouble elsewhere.

Not sure why you were downvoted but I can only imagine it might because folks mistook what you said? I don't know.

Suspension is a punishment only in that it removes them from the environment so they cannot harm others. The legal system will need to be involved. All of that said, these kids seem to be quite young. I doubt much will actually happen to them legally - and that's probably fine. As long as the kids learn their lesson and never do it again. I hope this also is used as a teaching moment for everyone that we now need to contend with images that are created not only of adults but of children.

> As long as the kids learn their lesson and never do it again.

How would they learn that, if they just got a few days off school?

Does Florida have teaching centres for kids excluded from their normal schooling?

In the UK we have CPNs and ASBOs for 10+ who do things wrong, such as graffiti or potentially this, which would involve court mandated support groups or community service. Knowing that as a society, we don't accept this behaviour would be much better than a suspension which would imply that society doesn't care, just school.

> a kickass butterfly knife in my backpack

Just to point out, that's a deadly weapon.

And "a kid at school with a deadly weapon" has led to tragedy many times over the past decade(s).

Oh, I think it was too lenient. Ir to be honest, it's less about leniency and more about redressing the injurt to the victims of the "harassment". I don't think it's fair to expect the girls to continue going to school with those boys as if nothing happened after 2 weeks, and the offense is such that I think you can make the argument that expulsion or some other major punishment isn't "way too harsh". So all in all, in the interests of the victims and as a means of setting out a clear message that those kinds of things won't be tolerated, I believe it would have been best to expel the students in question, even though it's most likely a case of teenage boys not properly thinking through the impact and consequences of their actions.

It's far too extreme in my view.

No one was actually harmed by someone creating art.

If someone writes a fictional story where a classmate is a character, or they draw a cartoon, or they paint an oil painting or they use a computer to make digital art, that all has to fall under freedom of expression or we're not really a free country anymore.

Now, if they were trying to fraudulently pass the creations off as real- if they made an image that looked like it was taken by a security camera and said "This is real, I caught person X doing <whatever> and here's the security camera proof" then sure, that's fraud. Or plausibly, the images could have been used in a way which was harassment- if someone glued the picture to a student's locker to try to embarrass or annoy them or whatever, sure then that act is harassment.

But all this panic and pearl-clutching over AI generated images is silly. In 5 years there will be AI-nudes of everyone and we'll all collectively shrug it off and go about our days and laugh at the luddite prudes of yesteryear.

I don't believe that's true. If the boys had drawn pornographic, photorealistic pictures of the girls in question, and distributed them, it would be a serious matter. You have to actually reckon with these difficult questions instead of just brushing them aside.

Why is it an act of harassment to put them up if it's not am act of harassment to produce and distribute them?

I also don't agree with your final assertion at all, I think we're in for a world of hurt here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com