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Author Ed Anderson's avatar

It’s terrible what you and the other author went through.

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Linda George's avatar

Sam, I got a lot of those, "Hi, beautiful lady" posts on LinkedIn etc. I ignored them. If they persisted, "I want to suck your toes" (yes, really) I reported them and they were banned from the platform.

I also changed my profile to include, "I've been married 50 years to my soul mate." That usually stops the ones looking for more than friendship.

My daughter was bullied in high school by 2 girls.....before social media. I shudder to imagine what could have happened online.

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Sam H Arnold's avatar

Yes I’m grateful that I grew up in an era without social media.

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Karen Brenchley's avatar

I regularly have accounts follow me on Substack, that have photos of generic middle aged men staring straight into the camera that may be generated by ai they are so similar. The last names often aren’t capitalized, and I get a message like “Hello, beautiful.” There is no other activity on the accounts.

I’m not beautiful, I’m happily married, and have plenty of friends, male and female.

I don’t even bother to block them anymore.

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Linda George's avatar

Report them to Substack!

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Karen Brenchley's avatar

I used to, but it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole.

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RJ Sykes's avatar

Wow, this was a hard-hitting read. That poor child. It's so heartbreaking what happened. Sometimes I wonder if there should be an internet at all. Let alone make it accessible to children. Truly frightening.

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David Perlmutter's avatar

The Todd case was all over the news in Canada when it first broke. It was really how I understood that the Internet was a complex thing working for bad as well as good.

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