UPenn deletes disgraced Twitter exec Yoel Roth’s PhD dissertation arguing minors should have access to sex apps

"Yet, absent from these discussions is even a cursory recognition that the new medium of gay-targeted social networking may be a crucial social outlet for gay, bisexual, and questioning youth," Roth wrote, arguing for the consideration of allowing minors on Grindr.

It has been revealed that former Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter Yoel Roth’s doctoral dissertation, entitled "Gay Data," has been withdrawn from the University of Pennsylvania.

According to the Substack Contra, Roth’s dissertation was withdrawn from the website as of December 11.

The 2016 dissertation speaks about the potential usage of sex-based apps, similar to Grindr, for LGBTQ youth.

In one section, Roth outlines the problems with allowing minors on Grindr, an adult app made for connecting gay men for sex.

Citing three examples involving adult Grindr users meeting underage users of the app, Roth wrote, "In each case, public accounts of the assaults are framed in largely the same way: older, predatory men take advantage of impressionable, naive teenagers who have stumbled their way onto Grindr."


Despite these issues, Roth wrote, "Yet, absent from these discussions is even a cursory recognition that the new medium of gay-targeted social networking may be a crucial social outlet for gay, bisexual, and questioning youth."

"While gay youth-oriented chat rooms and social networking services were available in the early 2000s, these services have largely fallen by the wayside, in favor of general-purpose platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat," Roth continued.

"Perhaps this is truly representative of an increasingly absent demand among young adults for networked spaces to engage with peers about their sexuality; but it’s worth considering how, if at all, the current generation of popular sites of gay networked sociability might fit into an overall queer social landscape that increasingly includes individuals under the age of 18."

"Even with the service’s extensive content management, Grindr may well be too lewd or too hook-up-oriented to be a safe and age-appropriate resource for teenagers; but the fact that people under 18 are on these services already indicates that we can’t readily dismiss these platforms out of hand as loci for queer youth culture," he added.

"Rather than merely trying to absolve themselves of legal responsibility or, worse, trying to drive out teenagers entirely, service providers should instead focus on crafting safety strategies that can accommodate a wide variety of use cases for platforms like Grindr — including, possibly, their role in safely connecting queer young adults."

Noting the cases of assault brought forward by app users, Roth asked "Would these assaults have happened anyway (perhaps with different victims) if Grindr didn’t exist? Assaults, robberies, and rapes happen when people meet offline, too; yet in these cases, we’re fixated on the fact that a new technology seemed to play a crucial part in enabling something tragic to happen."

The revelation of Roth’s dissertation comes as Twitter owner Elon Musk takes on child exploitation that has reportedly been occurring on the platform "for years."

Lesley Podesta, Eirliani A Rahman, and Anne Collier resigned from their positions on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council last week, with Musk stating "It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!"

Despite former CEO and founder of the company Jack Dorsey stating that "this is false," Musk wrote, "No, it is not."

"When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety," Musk continued. She raised this with Ned & Parag, but they rejected her staffing request. I made it top priority immediately."

Roth, who resigned from his position on November 10, was revealed to have made a number of questionable posts regarding sex with minors.

In one 2010 tweet from Roth, he wrote, "Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?"

He linked an article from Salon titled "Student-teacher sex: When is it OK?" which documents the story of a high school choir teacher, Matthew Hirschfelder, who had sex with a student. According to Salon, "Things get messier when looking at cases like Hirschfelder's. If we draw the line at high school graduation, as opposed to at a student's 18th birthday, it means that a teacher having sex with a...

Morning Mistress

 

The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #1231

Before You Click On The "Read More" Link, 

Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.

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The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1931

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside? 

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific, 

from the beautiful to the repugnant, 

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed, 

you could be inspired, you could be appalled. 

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. 

You have been warned.

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Girls With Guns

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Visage à trois #649

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #830

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Hunter Biden’s Strategy To Go On The Offensive Further Indicts The Feds

A strangely timed DEA raid, whistleblower claims, and other red flags raise new questions about Hunter Biden and his family affairs.

Two months after the FBI subpoenaed the laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware computer repair store, the Drug Enforcement Administration searched the office of Hunter’s one-time psychiatrist Keith Ablow and seized a second laptop Hunter had left with him. The timing of the DEA raid and the fact that criminal charges were never filed against Ablow, coupled with whistleblowers’ claims that the FBI buried evidence against Hunter Biden, raises the question of whether the search was a pretext to recover Hunter’s laptop and protect the Biden family.

While the DEA’s recovery of the second Hunter Biden laptop escaped scrutiny over the last nearly three years, a Washington Post article from Saturday brings that laptop into focus — and with it questions about the DEA’s seizure of the laptop and agents’ decision to return it to Hunter.

Back in the News

In a weekend article titled “Some Hunter Biden Allies Making Plans to go After His Accusers,” The Washington Post reported that Hunter and his closest advisers are plotting an offensive for when Republicans assume control of the House of Representatives in January. The strategy sessions to counter what Biden associates frame as “an expected onslaught of investigations by House Republicans” began last September, according to the Post, with a meeting at the California home of Hunter Biden’s friend and lawyer Kevin Morris.

Morris, already famous in the entertainment industry as an attorney for the co-creators of “South Park,” gained notoriety when the New York Post reported that Morris “footed Hunter Biden’s overdue taxes totaling over $2 million.” In addition to Morris, David Brock, a liberal activist, reportedly joined in the September 2022 strategy session. “At one point, Hunter Biden himself happened to call into the meeting, connecting briefly by video to add his own thoughts,” according to the Post.

While not detailing Hunter’s purported thoughts, The Washington Post reported that Morris suggested “it was crucial” “for Hunter Biden’s camp to be more aggressive.” According to Saturday’s article, Morris then described during the September meeting at his California home the “defamation lawsuits the team could pursue against the presidential son’s critics, including Fox News, Eric Trump and Rudy Giuliani.” Morris also reportedly “outlined extensive research on two potential witnesses against Hunter Biden — a spurned business partner named Tony Bobulinski and a computer repairman named John Paul Mac Isaac.”

Brock provided more insight, telling the Post: “They feel that there is a whole counternarrative missing because of the whole Hunter-hater narrative out there.” “What we really got into was more the meat of it, the meat of what a response would look like,” Brock said of the September meeting. To aid the efforts, Brock planned to start a new group — since launched — named Facts First USA, which Brock described as a “SWAT team” designed to “ensure that the media and public do not accept the false narratives that flows from congressional investigations.”

More recently, according to the Post, “Brock’s group, Facts First, is engaging with Hunter Biden and those in his immediate circle.” Brock is reportedly “reviewing research that Morris has conducted on Biden’s adversaries, including Bobulinski and Mac Isaac.”

According to The Washington Post, Morris and others are also focused on whether the data claimed to be recovered from the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at the Delaware computer repair store, “was improperly obtained and distributed,” with Hunter and his allies suggesting that the materials released by Giuliani and others may not have originated from...

Our Parasitic Generation

Yes, there is a lot of ruin in great nations. But even America is by now running low on it.

"Be assured young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation."

— Adam Smith

Are we sure that there is all that much ruin left in the United States?

We are $31 trillion in collective debt. The new normal is $1.5 trillion budget deficits. The military is politicized and short of recruits. We trade lethal terrorists for woke celebrity athletes as if to confirm our enemies’ cynical stereotypes.

Our FBI is corrupt and discredited, collaborating with Silicon Valley contractors to suppress free speech and warp elections. We practice segregation and racial discrimination and claim we do not because the right and good people support it and, anyway, the victims deserve it. The country has seen defeat before but never abject, deliberate humiliation as in Kabul, when we fled and abandoned to the terrorist Taliban a $1 billion embassy, a huge, remodeled air base, thousands of friends, and tens of billions of dollars in military hardware—and hard-earned deterrence.

We are witnessing the breakdown of basic norms essential for civilized life, from affordable food and fuel to available key antibiotics and baby formula. Old Cairo seems safer than an after-hours subway ride or stroll at dusk in many major American cities. Medieval London’s roadways were likely cleaner than Market Street in San Francisco. Speech was freer in 1920s America than it is now.
The Breakdown of Basic Society

Our California always is a preamble to America’s future. Our present is likely your tomorrow.

Each summer here we impotently expect forest conflagrations. Millions of acres of flames pour more millions of tons of smoke and carbon and soot in the skies. Tens of millions of hated combustion engines cannot begin to match the natural blankets of aerial dirt.

The state seems to shrug it off, saying wildfires are both inevitable and natural. Old-fashioned forest management and fire-fighting strategies, honed over centuries, are deemed obsolete by our green experts. So, we let fiery nature take its better course. What is the implicit message to those in the way of fires that devour homes and trees? Nature’s way? Natural wood mulch? Or that such fools should not build their cabins or homes where they are not wanted?

What was bequeathed to us from a state of 15 million—magnificent aqueducts, once brilliantly designed freeways and airports, superb universities and schools, perfectly engineered reservoirs, and downtowns of majestic skyscrapers—in a California of 41 million are frozen in amber or in decay. They have few updates and even fewer replacements. The decrepitude recalls the weedy forums and choked fountains of Vandal-era Roman cities, which is what happens when a later parasitic generation mocks but still consumes what it...

Visage à trois #648

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