peter bassill · operator
$ ls writing/series/protecting-our-children/

series: Protecting Our Children.

Part 1 of a new series. Europol has just referred 4,340 URLs tied to The Com, a network that grooms and coerces children on the platforms they already use. Why the dark-web mental model fails parents, what the numbers say, and what follows.

3 parts Latest · 2026·07·25
  1. 01 They were never on the dark web Part 1 of a new series. Europol has just referred 4,340 URLs tied to The Com, a network that grooms and coerces children on the platforms they already use. Why the dark-web mental model fails parents, what the numbers say, and what follows. 2026·07·25 · 10 min
  2. 02 The first message is always kind Part 2: how contact with a child actually starts. Not a stranger saying something obviously wrong, but attention, aimed at a child having a bad week. The pattern, the four things that stop them telling you, and the sentence to say before anything happens. 2026·07·25 · 9 min
  3. 03 The first hour Part 3: a child has just told you they are being extorted over an image. What to do, in what order, in the hour that follows. Why not to pay, why not to block before you capture, what Report Remove actually does, and why the image is not the emergency. 2026·07·25 · 10 min

all series  ·  all writing