NEW YORK (AP) – Jonifer Neal’s Kia was stolen twice in one day. First from in front of his home in Chicago, then from outside the repair shop where he had brought it in for repairs.
But Neil’s ordeal didn’t end there. After her car was recovered a month later, she was stopped twice by police on her way home from her job because a police error left the Optima registered as stolen. The same mistake led to officers waking her up at 3 a.m. on another night. Yet another time, on her way to Mississippi, a swarm of police officers stopped her, handcuffed her and locked her in the back seat of a cruiser for more than an hour.
The Kia is currently stored in the garage.
“It’s been a few months and I’m honestly still nervous,” Neal said. “I drive that car about once in a blue moon, and I loved it.”
Neal’s story is one of thousands of Kia and Hyundai owners across the country whose cars have been stolen or damaged in the past two years.
This sudden increase is linked to viral videos posted on TikTok and other social media platforms that teach people how to start their car with a USB cable and without the engine immobilizer, which is standard on most models. It teaches how to exploit security vulnerabilities in some models sold in the United States. Cars from the 1990s and newer cannot start the engine without the key.
But unlike some social media-driven trends that seem to disappear as soon as police crack down, auto theft continuation. Hyundai is working with TikTok and other platforms to remove the videos, but a new wave of thefts is occurring as new videos surface, raising concerns about the lingering effects of dangerous content for profit. It shows. Traction with teens Looking for a way to go viral.
It’s a phenomenon known as performance crime. Law enforcement officials in more than a dozen cities say this is a contributing factor to the increase in juveniles being arrested or charged with auto theft. Still, criminology experts say the role teens are playing in the rise in thefts (which began during the pandemic and is not limited to Kia and Hyundai) may be due to the fact that teens with less criminal experience may It warns that the numbers may be artificially exaggerated, as arrests are likely.
from the attorney general 17 states and asked federal regulators to issue a mandatory recall. Voluntary software fixes Just what a company issues is not enough. Several cities, including Baltimore, Milwaukee and New York, have filed or announced plans to join lawsuits against automakers, and consumers like Neal have also filed class-action lawsuits and civil lawsuits.One such lawsuit was settled for an amount of approximately $200 million last week.
The National Highway Safety Administration has blamed at least 14 crashes and eight deaths on this trend, but lawyers suing automakers say the number is likely much higher.
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In late March, Morgan Cornfind was driving to a yoga class in Portland, Oregon, when a man in a stolen Kia reversed direction and plowed into her while fleeing from police. The 25-year-old suffered lacerations, broken bones and major injuries to her leg. She needs surgery and she has multiple appointments each week.
“I’m no longer able to do the work I love. I can’t practice yoga or walk my dog. As my rehabilitation continues, I’m no longer able to go on trips with friends that I had planned. . It is very depressing to think that I will never be able to drive a car again,” she said in a statement.
Earlier this month, a Kia vehicle was stolen in Milwaukee. clashed with school The bus collided with a car, leaving a 15-year-old boy hanging out the window in critical condition. Police subsequently arrested four 14-year-old boys, one of whom is suspected of being the driver.
Many of the calls for accountability have been directed at automakers. MLG Attorneys at Law, a California law firm that specializes in auto defect litigation, has received more than 4,000 calls from victims like Cohnfind.
“And what’s surprising is that it’s not slowing down,” said Randy Shrewsbury, MLG’s chief strategy officer.
But some police, victims and car manufacturers have also blamed social media platforms. Videos posted on YouTube in recent weeks show people breaking into various cars and wiring them up using USB cables. The company removed the video after being notified by the Associated Press.
YouTube has removed videos depicting the so-called “Kia Challenge” in recent months, spokeswoman Elena Hernandez said in a statement, stressing that the company considers the circumstances when making such decisions.
“Some videos may be allowed for educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purposes,” Hernandez wrote.
In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson denied claims that many of the dangerous challenges mentioned in news reports were popularized on the platform.
“There is no evidence that these challenges have become ‘trending’ on TikTok, and many challenges falsely associated with TikTok completely pre-date the platform,” TikTok spokesperson Ben Raate said in a statement. There is a clear documented history of this.”
Hany Farid, who resigned from TikTok’s U.S. Content Advisory Board in January because she felt unable to affect change, said TikTok tends to get defensive when criticized for its content moderation practices. said. He acknowledged that knowing the origins of trends is a challenge as content moves quickly between platforms.
“It’s really a whack-a-mole problem,” said Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “Because these platforms are not designed to be safe for kids or anyone.”
According to TikTok’s enforcement report for the past three months of 2022, 5% of videos removed by the company were due to unsafe behavior or challenges, and 82% were removed within 24 hours.
Like many social platforms, TikTok curates content using a combination of artificial intelligence and human moderators who try to catch anything the AI might miss. A spokesperson said it is easier to detect certain violations, such as nudity, with technology than something like car break-ins by teenagers. Human moderators are a second level of review when content is questionable.
Users may also subvert control of the platform by misspelling words or changing words within hashtags. Some think this is a notable loophole. TikTok said it was monitoring misspellings and touted it as a success in pushing the content out of mainstream hashtags.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, did not respond to a request for comment on how it screens similar videos.
The Kia Challenge is the current social media crime trend, but it’s not the first. And experts say this does not indicate that social media is causing a paradigm shift in criminal behavior.
Before the Kia Challenge, police in LaGrange, Georgia, a city of about 31,000 people near the Alabama border, were dealing with the aftermath of the Orby’s Challenge. The Orbees Challenge asked people to shoot small gel-filled balls using toy guns or airsoft guns. Call strangers and friends with Orbees. Lt. Mark Cavender said officers were alarmed when they saw the middle school student using a toy gun painted black to look like a real weapon and issued an immediate warning to stop.
Michael Scott, director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing at Arizona State University, said social media hasn’t completely changed crime.
“Social media seems like something fundamentally new, only the speed and breadth is new,” Scott said.
There are also many examples of trends in criminal behavior becoming widespread before social media existed as it does today. Before there was a “robber mob”, there was a thing called “wilding” in the 1980s, where people gathered in public places to cause chaos, cause destruction, and steal property. Ta. And before the Kia Challenge, there was a group of teenagers in the 1990s who thought they could steal a General Motors car using a screwdriver.
Scott, who was a St. Louis Police Department officer at the time, said automakers were slow to respond when officers noticed an increase in car thefts.
“Even without social media, the method spread across the country,” he says. “What social media has changed is that it has sped up the process. Before, you had to know or meet someone who understood that all you needed was a driver.”
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Lauer reported from Philadelphia.