National Pedophile/Blog Witch-hunt Heats Up

[stewardess]

Who is the real enemy? It starts with a B.Most Americans are aware that, during the last two days, lawmen in several U.S. states have arrested dozens of registered sex offenders with MySpace accounts

Comments

[lannamichaels]

I wonder who it's going to be after MySpace. When I first started flyin' solo on the internet without my parents over my shoulder the entire time, it was with my parents' trust that I wasn't going to give away information like my name, my address, etc. They were very very very worried about AOL chatrooms. Because, don't you know, sexual predators get on chatrooms, pretend to be kids, and then lure their victims to them.

I was on a message board pretty heavily when a Young Blonde White Girl ran into some AOL-chatroom-caused problems with a pedophile, and my mom freaked out. She spent about a week asking me over and over again if I went into AOL chatrooms and if I was being safe. I tried to explain the difference between chatting about star wars on a message board vs. "a/s/l" in random places. I don't think she got it.

Since AOL seems to have in the last few years become Less Evil and MySpace is now the bastion of Evil Men Who Will Hurt Your Kids, and I never used either of them, it makes me wonder if the third time's the charm and if, in fact, the next panic site, will be one I use. But I figured it would be Facebook (already started going down that lane when they opened it up past college) rather than LJ. I wonder if SixApart thinks otherwise.

At least with grown men going into chatrooms focused towards teens, there was some kind of inherant creepiness involved. But, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't MySpace originally for bands, not kids? The fact that it's become a social networking site for non-musicials, imho, doesn't change the fact that its inherant purpose is not kids talking to other kids, but people (mostly over-18s, one assumes) pushing their bands. The fact that "sexual predators on Myspace == being predatory towards kids" does not follow. If they have kids friended, or whatever, okay, whatever. But simply having a MySpace...my brain breaks.

[stewardess]

That's very interesting. I didn't know how MySpace began.

I'm worried about MySpace's "Sentinel SAFE" program. It seems very likely all blogging services will be pressured to create similar programs to track sex offenders. In the current climate, I don't see how they can not do it. The bad PR would scare the pants off of any company.

It reminds me of the FBI monitoring Black Power groups in the 60s and 70s. They assumed the groups were breaking the law, and harassed them mercilessly. The Black Panthers and others were treated like criminals. It was "shoot first and ask questions later."

Blogging: now a crime!

*groans*