notforprophet

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Honeypot

I envision Xanga’s Rating System as actually assisting skillful child exploiters with winning the trust and confidence of certain gullible kids.

How so?

The child molester initially sets up a cute and fuzzy and good-feeling ‘A’-rated site. This is the honeypot.   He then goes about seeking potential child victims and comments and subscribes to attractive children-targets. These children-targets, in turn, visit the honeypot, like what they see and, in turn, subscribe.

Parents are aware that Xanga has this new Rating System, but may nevertheless want initially to confirm that their young teenager’s subscription selection of an A-rated site is, indeed, A-Xanga compliant.   The honeypot, still in the child-gathering mode, of course, is. So the parents approve of their child’s selection and rest more assured because the Xanga rating system appears to be functioning correctly as a content-filtering system. The kids, believing that both their parents (initially) and Xanga (continually) are ‘looking out for them’ have more reason to trust the sites they have subscribed to than they would have if ratings didn’t exist.

One day, the honeypot becomes ‘ripe’ for the child exploiter. It’s time to shift from the fuzzy child-gathering mode where it remained A-compliant with the blessing of parents/Xanga to a delicate child-manipulative mode where non-A rated content starts to creep in. Some children, believing that Xanga is assisting their parents in protecting them, aren’t as wary as they might otherwise be.   So as the honeypot's A-content becomes C-content mutates into D-content and finally exposes as EX-content, the most gullible of kids, though they may be somewhat guilt-ridden in being led into a taboo, nevertheless rationalize it as “but Xanga is protecting me and my parents have approved of it.”

Or course, other kids, more savvy, may start flagging and negatively cross-rating the tactics of the exploiter’s site gone into its manipulative mode.   The exploiter knows he has to act quickly: the site must go into an acquisition mode—harvesting the most gullible, acquiring private contact information, arranging for extended means of continuing contact—before Xanga reviews the inpouring flags and contra-A cross-ratings.

How long does the child abuser have? Days? Weeks of gullible trust before Xanga intervenes?

If the molester plays it right, he may even be able to complete his harvest (let’s say by arranging for a face-to-face meeting)—before Xanga responds to the danger signs—and convert his honeypot back to its original A-compliant mode. Given that Xanga is going to have to deal with a huge volume of very bad ‘false positive’ cross-ratings and flags anyways, the molester may come in under the radar: out of sight, out of mind.

In any case, the child exploiter feels a great sense of gratitude to the Xanga Team—realizing that the Ratings System hugely assisted him with winning the trust and confidence of his next delicious victim.