To Catch a YouTube Predator: The Horrific Case of Viral Star Austin Jones

How a 24-year-old social-media sensation got busted for soliciting child pornography from his teenage fans.

While all of the adults have been busy logging on to Twitter dot com to argue about Megyn Kelly, teens and tweens have receded into darker and darker corners of the World Wide Web. YouTube, the original home of the cat video, has grown wild and vast, and is lorded over by adolescent content-makers armed with makeup tutorials and acoustic covers. While anyone can upload online, it takes a certain type of teen to build a following on the internet. The cookie-cutter YouTube star—at least of the male variety—seems to be predominately white, with the voice of a medieval choirboy and the haircut of a 2010 Justin Bieber. Austin Jones, a 24-year-old YouTuber, falls effortlessly into this archetype.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/to-catch-a-youtube-predator-the-horrific-case-of-viral-star-austin-jones

from the article:

On Monday, Jones was seized at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and taken into custody on two counts of production of child pornography. According to the criminal complaint against Jones, the YouTube star “used Facebook and Apple’s iMessage service to request and received videos depicting the genitalia of minor females, knowing that they were only 14 or 15 years old.” The complaint then describes an interview between Jones and Homeland Security investigators, during which Jones confessed that he had used Facebook to conduct sexually explicit conversations with young girls and solicit videos of them dancing and/or performing sexual acts.

What a dirty rotten scumbag....and look how easy it is to do something like this. Worrying.

Of course he's a scumbag, but are these girls completely mad?

Raggamuffin wrote:Of course he's a scumbag, but are these girls completely mad?

This takes us back to the "grooming" debate that sassy and I had with you a few months ago