Comments | stewardess: National Pedophile/Blog Witch-hunt Heats Up

stewardess

National Pedophile/Blog Witch-hunt Heats Up

Jun 16, 2007 20:20

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 ( Read more... )

lj: 2007 pedophile witch-hunt

Comments 67

elfwreck June 17 2007, 20:06:48 UTC

The RCoG article is... interesting.

Doesn't mention LJ at all. Says, "According to a 2003 study, about half of all blogs are authored by teenagers." I bet that's higher by now... but I'm not sure, 'cos I don't know what they mean by "blog."

Any account at MySpace, Frienster, LJ, GJ, DJ, Bebo, Facebook, Tribe, Blogger, Blogspot, Vox, etc., plus all those individual blogs out there? Damn, where are they getting the numbers? Who is crawling the entire internet counting blogs? Do they even have a way to identify Russian blogs, or are they just counting English ones? Or just using Wikipedia's Social Networking Sites as a complete list of what's available, and ignoring people who've put blogs on their own sites?

And I love the bit at the end:
Is this article saying that every blog in the world is wrong? No, of course not! Again, there are professionals and specialists who use blogs to serve a proper and beneficial purpose.

But they don't say which blogs those are, or what are proper and beneficial purposes. I don't know if they think ( ... )

stewardess June 18 2007, 04:09:33 UTC

I don't think they are concerned with adults; we're already a lost cause. They seem far more interested in keeping teenagers off the Internet.

The Internet turns you gay, you know. All those images of men kissing warp your mind.

They could be getting their stats from blogging services, who provide data to promote themselves.

malakijr June 17 2007, 20:58:58 UTC

When my journal was restored, I removed all the offending interests from my profile. Then I got all pissy and put them all back. At some point, livejournal may decide it needs to protect 12 year olds form me and my journal may be suspended again, who knows. But considering the pedophiles who are still posting on LJ whose journals were never suspended to begin with, I don't think anyone will thank 6A for actually protecting kids anytime soon.

maidenmorticia June 18 2007, 00:27:30 UTC

I don't think anyone will thank 6A for actually protecting kids anytime soon.

Not to mention the fact that they suspended all these people & then reinstated a bunch (& as you say never suspended a bunch of others) and YET... they don't seem to have picked up the phone once to call the cops and have these "criminals" arrested. How is that defending children, let alone giving us anything to thank LJ for!?! (I ask, yet again).

OK, I'm a broken record. I'm sorry. I just have to get that in at every opportunity these days.

That, & I love your icon.

stewardess June 18 2007, 04:03:23 UTC

I put my interests back, too. I'm not going to change them until after Six Apart reveals their new terms of service. Presumably, Six Apart will not carry out additional interest-based suspensions until after that.

In the meantime, I've created an Insane Journal, and I'm starting to like the place.

maidenmorticia June 18 2007, 00:30:36 UTC

*waves at stewardess*

I came over after the comment you left me on my post about the Texas arrests in whydoesljcensor to see what you'd written on this topic. Thanks for the links. As I said there, however, it's entirely possible that your original theory on the money grubbing is not entirely incorrect. One could see that LJ Inc. would see the potentially bad press as a decrease in profits.

I wonder if we'll ever really know? Or if it matters? At this point, I just wish they'd hurry up and make their big announcements!

stewardess June 18 2007, 03:59:34 UTC

I'm discussing some points you brought up over at whydoesljcensor here, too ( ... )

maidenmorticia June 19 2007, 00:00:19 UTC

I've concluded their customer service is mind-bogglingly terrible

*nod* I don't feel it was so bad a few years ago. But now (& especially right now) I've got nothing but complaints. And I really am starting to self-loathe myself for the whining.

Today I had an interesting theoretical discussion which put some of this into interesting perspective. If you want to read:

http://www.greatestjournal.com/users/maidenmorticia/2586.html

It's in my protest journal.

thinkingheart June 18 2007, 11:09:15 UTC

The only way to help kids be safe is to teach them to question what the other person is saying to them, to think for themselves and form their own opinions. Nothing is more frightening to authoritarians of any stripe than the idea that the techniques and mental habits of critical analysis will become more widespread.

Fundies already have considerable experience where "grooming" is concerned: it's exactly the same procedure as hunting for vulnerable people and inducting them into their church. It's therefore not surprising that they will prefer the futile hunt for ways of protecting children that do not involve teaching them 'anti-grooming' skills.

Unfortunately the Fundies are right. By arguing for any sort of responsible freedom we are necessarily attacking everything they stand for: irresponsible obedience.

stewardess June 19 2007, 02:44:24 UTC

It's therefore not surprising that they will prefer the futile hunt for ways of protecting children that do not involve teaching them 'anti-grooming' skills.

That's an interesting suggestion. You are right, the most important tool children have to keep them safe is to learn to think for themselves and to value their own opinions. Sheltering children may be a noble goal, but it is far from foolproof. Sexual assaults come from family friends and relatives.

ingriam June 25 2007, 07:35:47 UTC

You hit the nail right on the head. Kudos.

maidenmorticia June 19 2007, 21:48:01 UTC

*waves*

I'm guessing you heard about the pedophile ring busted in the UK/US/Canada/Australia?? Yet again another fine example of what LJ could accomplish if they did things right... or perhaps, as you dared to point out, there is simply nothing to accomplish at LJ?!

stewardess June 20 2007, 02:51:45 UTC

Regardless of what can be accomplished, blogging services should not try to be cops.

Service providers like MySpace and LiveJournal are prohibited from actively policing content -- if they do actively police, they can be held legally liable for ALL content at their site. That means they could be sued if someone uploaded a TV show, sued for slander, and so on.

MySpace may have developed a workaround when they set up a separate company to build the Sentinel SAFE program; it's not clear to me how they were able to do it without violating safe harbor status, however. Perhaps they have violated safe harbor status technically ( ... )