We had to minimize the myspace window for long enough to read about Attorney General Tom Reilly's latest effort to protect the kids. A couple of months ago he was hot on keeping predators away from children on myspace. This month the AG and gubernatorial candidate is taking issue with the terms and conditions of Xanga. To be honest, Friendster was the new hotness when we first got into the whole internet-as-social-network thing (well, alright, we had a .plan file on our VAX and dabbled in IRC before Windows 95). We missed out on the livejournal revolution (our avatar sucked so we just abandoned the stie). And with all the time we spend trolling YouTube, Flickr, and Myspace there isn't much left over to have gotten into Xanga. That and we've never been much of a diarist. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There are many users who make one of their online homes at Xanga. With a minimum user age of 13 there is an opportunity for kids who aren't old enough to vote, and some of them not even to drive, to grab a spot on the web and share a whole lot of information about themselves to the online community. Where we take careful steps to keep stuff off our myspace profile that we wouldn't want our employers to see, the concern isn't the same for the younger set. Tom Reilly is hoping to win favor with the voting age population by taking on the Xanga policies to add safeguards for kids. Protecting the children is always a popular election year issue. Our suggestion – go after myspace Tom. A 30 year old who is friends with entirely too many 14 year olds for anyone's good.
As part of his campaign Reilly is taking an "on your street, on your side" tour. We'll take this photo of the AG in Billerica and caption it "Tom Reilly tells kids to watch out for online predators. Now."
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