MySpace To Be Made Safer For Users

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "'When News Corp. bought the social-networking Web site MySpace.com last July, the media company got two surprises, one good and one bad,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The good news: Traffic nearly doubled in the last half of last year. The bad news: MySpace is being criticized for exposing children to risqué content and sexual predators. In response, 'News Corp. plans to appoint a "safety czar" to oversee the site, launch an education campaign that may include letters to schools and public-service announcements to encourage children not to reveal their contact information."

Comments

MySpace PSAs?

[gEvil (beta)]

Good to see that another company has found a way to pass off advertising as "public service announcements."

Shoot.

[grub]

I guess it's back to trenchcoats, candy, and schoolyards for me.

Re:Shoot.

[TubeSteak]

Just last week, I was sitting on a bench, in a hallway (talking on my cellphone) when a class let out.

Some female teacher happened to be walking by at the same moment and she was holding a small bowl with some candy in it.

She kinda waved it around and said "free candy, please take it, I don't want to have to eat it."

Now, she had stopped almost exactly in front of me, but on the other side of the hall. It took all my willpower not to blurt out "My mother told me to never take candy from strangers."

MySpace To Be Made Safer For Users

[TubeSteak]

Step 1. Banning any and all use of the color Pink
Step 2. Deleting all profiles that use the word "like" more than twice
Step 3. DeLeTiNg AlL PrOfIlEs ThAt LoOk LiKe ThIs
Step 4. Making MySpace safe from internet predators
Step 6. Profit!

And yes, I want it done in that goddamn order.

Re:MySpace To Be Made Safer For Users

[hunterx11]

Step 5 really is ???, because I have no idea how they're going to profit after they kick out all of their users with steps 1-4.

Re:What it is with this Administration and Czars?

[gEvil (beta)]

What's next? Overlords?

Well, at least they'll be welcomed.

Good Candidate for Safety Czar

[Billosaur]

Dick Cheney

Re:Good Candidate for Safety Czar

[mogwai7]

Looks like he already is:

http://www.myspace.com/safetyczar

Re:responsible design

[PFI_Optix]

Reminds me of when a popular forum meme got hotlinked off the creator's server a while back. The myspace kiddies posted it and posted it and posted it, and he let it go for a week...then replaced it with a random image grab from a directory full of goatse-esque images.

Suddenly myspace was flooded with them, mass bannings occurred, and we all had a great laugh.

Myspace needs to get their own image hosting that automatically parses hotlinks and caches them on the server...it would save their idi...umm...novice users a lot of grief.

What will he prevent?

[Milio]

So if the Drug Czar works to prevent drug use, and the Terrorism Czar works to prevent terrorism, what does the Safety Czar work to prevent?

Re:What it is with this Administration and Czars?

[vertinox]

What it is with this Administration and Czars?

Well the runners up were:

Lord Safety
Prince Safety
King Safety
Emperor of Safety
Der Safety Fuer
Il Safety Duce
People's Chairman of Safety
Premiere Safety
President Safety for Life

Michael Brown is your man!

[elrous0]

Not only did he do a heckuva job during Katrina, but I hear he's looking for work.

-Eric