Slashdot Mirror
MySpace Users Revolt Against Murdoch
arclightfire writes "Looks like Murdoch's News International have stired up a revolt within users of the MySpace file-sharing site they purchased for $629m (£355m) last July, reports the Independent; "Angry members of MySpace, the personal file-sharing website for young adults, are accusing Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation of censoring their postings and blocking their access to rival sites. The 38 million subscribers to MySpace...discovered that when they wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube, the words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens. The intervention by News Corp in the traditionally open-access world of the web - in particular the alteration of personal user profiles - provoked a storm of angry posts...The protests gathered pace, and when 600 MySpace customers complained and a campaign began to boycott the site and relocate to rival sites such as Friendster, Linkedin, revver.com and Facebook.com, News Corp relented and restored the links.""
Who ever suggested the net was free of censorship?
Seriously.
The opposite of progress is congress
Why, again, do we care about the cesspool that is MySpace?
Wouldn't the world actually be a BETTER place if all the users revolted, and the site shut down altogether?
What the Web won't be like in 10 years? (1997)
So much for corporations being less in control at the hands of the communities.
This is a perfect example of how to fight commercial censorship... vote with your wallet.
This isn't the sig you're looking for... Move along.
...belongs to those who own the presses, a fact-of-life with which I suspect Mr. Murdoch is well-acquainted.
"My Space." That's funny.
If the dot com bubble taught us anything, it's that "If it's free on the internet, it's unreliable and fully controlled by somebody who will run it into the ground". I'm costantly telling that to bands who rely on Myspace as their primary website. Very soon, Fox might, and could pull an MP3.com and just pull the plug, leaving thousands (millions?) of bands without a web presence. There also plenty of people who only communicate through myspace, and so when myspace goes, all communication ends, and they lose those friends. These kids who think they have the right to post whatever they want are sadly misinformed, but they are 12 years old (claiming to be 18 of course), so we can't blaim them for their naivety.
Some people choose to buy drugs, some people choose to meet people, some people choose to listen to music, some people choose to....
A social network imitating society.. what are the odds?
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
While you're shutting down MySpace make sure you get every other means of communications those Pot Smokers use too...Cell Phones, msn...aol...yahoo...gaim...jabber...personal contact at school...ban them from the shopping mall...play ground...hell you could escort the kid everywhere he goes but I doubt this war on drugs mentality would make anyones life better.
As a 29-year-old MySpace user and owner of my own domain (in fact I have my own vmware server), may I be the first to invite you to shut the hell up?
You want to set up your own site on your own domain/hosting, go right ahead. Good luck getting any visitors. You want to make contact with new people, communicate with them, set up a virtual social network of people who you can later meet up with in real life, well you need something like MySpace. It's the users, stupid. Oh, and you get to discover cool new bands as well.
And another thing - is the irony of a lot of Slashdot users making fun of a lot of "12-year-old goth" MySpace users lost on everyone but me? I frequent both sites, and let me tell you, MySpace has a LOT more "normal" people on it than Slashdot.
So in summary, shut up.
Your Youngest son's biggest problem is a dad who considers "motorcycle stunts" safer than smoking pot.
Oh, and hacking your son's private stuff is also a great lesson on trust. My father pulled that stunt too and it cost him bitter tears of regret a few years after the fact. I hope your son educates himself on the practical uses of cryptography and cuts you off from his digital life as he probably already did from his "real" life.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
You'll let one child perform motorcycle stunts and show off to his friends but you won't let your other child buy pot? Am I missing something here? I'd rather my kid smoke a joint than eat through a tube for the rest of his life. Not that I'd like my kids to do drugs, but you get my point.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
I hope people are finally Getting It that if we are to subjugate ourselves entirely to technology, if we are content to surround ourselves with gadgets and gizmos, that than perhaps it's not a good idea to leave every single last scrap of control over technology, from space stations to digital watches, in the hands of about five trillionaires worldwide. Can anybody see a problem there?