the goal was to target and groom children. 12 years olds explicitly.
That's definitely what it felt like, in retrospect, as a 12 year old on the Internet. Society already understood that giving strangers access to your children was opening the door for abuse, yet somehow when that access was digital their brains shut down and forgot what strangers might do with said access. Perhaps they trusted companies too much to act on the up-and-up, or they trusted governments too much to properly regulate the new technology, but the harm was done either way, and reprehensibly continues to be done even now that we know how horrible it is.
That's definitely what it felt like, in retrospect, as a 12 year old on the Internet. Society already understood that giving strangers access to your children was opening the door for abuse, yet somehow when that access was digital their brains shut down and forgot what strangers might do with said access. Perhaps they trusted companies too much to act on the up-and-up, or they trusted governments too much to properly regulate the new technology, but the harm was done either way, and reprehensibly continues to be done even now that we know how horrible it is.