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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."
Parents need to keep an eye on their kids. Here is an analogy. One would not let them run free through a big city with out a watchful eye. Besides, all the teeny myspace bopers know exactly what they are doing. Generation gap is in effect.
This is my signature.
Websites that let children meet random people on the internet are being used by pedophiles.
Oh, wait...this was talked about almost ten years ago.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
You know what pisses me off? Sites like myspace and stumbleupon that let users hotlink every image on your pr0n site, most often without citing the source. Bandwidth is expensive and this type of crap can push me into the red. It should be illegal.
.htaccess. There are plenty of resources to get information on how to stop it from happening. If you're going to have your site be public and running without hotlinking protection, then it's fair game.
Then disable them from hotlinking via http.conf or
We don't need legislation when a simple google search and a copy/paste would solve your issues.
way to make the world seem uglier than it really is i dont believe this is as big of a problem as made seem millions of contacts and conversations going on via the internet/myspace everyday without problem. Most human males are true perverts. we just have boundries that we choose not to cross. A small majority lack control of themselves
The biggest problem with myspace are all the users who think it's cool to customize your profile with all sorts of random useless crap like large background images, floating images, and ten video clips playing simultaneously.
that sexual predators are not in the offline world and only on webites... oh wait. they exist there. Is it that difficult to tell kids to not give out private info. (yes myspace can contain some info, but largely that is gonna be pretty useless, you have to actually talk to the person to get anything) Children are not exposed to predators through myspace, they are already exposed everyday. Is it that difficult for parents to practice a little bit of, oh i dont know, PARENTING. Maybe if your kid isnt smart enough to not give out info to everyone they meet online, they shouldnt be allowed online.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
The biggest problem with myspace are all the users who think it's cool to customize your profile with all sorts of random useless crap like large background images, floating images, and ten video clips playing simultaneously.
Well, now that geocities is basically dead, the lamers had to go somewhere, right?
At your house? You let her watch porn at her friends?
Children should be supervised. Period. and if they're not then you should take whatever steps are necessary, including preventing access to friends who are a poor influence, you're the responsible adult after all.
Deleted
All these sites could be dangerous. I have looked through MySpace to see if I could get any funny dirt on anyone (Yes, I found funny pics of a coworker in a skimpy outfit hitting a bong, but that's beside the point) With just a first name, approx. age and city, it is so easy to find out someone's address. But what gets even crazier, is that a lot of the profiles have where people work. So when someone says they work at XXXXXX Restaurant on weekends or whatever, it would be very easy to bump into them.
My friend was on eharmony, and I showed her how easy it was to get people's info. I showed her how you could punch a first name, approx age and city into a site like intellius or zabasearch, and get a last name and an address. It freaked her out enough to where she dropped her subscription...
I have always thought it would be fun to call a news station during sweeps month and offer to show a reporter how easy it is to get full names and addys from eharmony or yahoo personals etc... for free. You can get a whole lot more info if you are willing to use a paid background check service.
Dont put anything on the internet you dont want others seeing....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I was 12 in 1995 when the Internet started becoming semi-mainstream. My family has had real access since about that time. We knew back then that you don't go revealing information online unless you're in a position to defend yourself. Now that I'm a man, I can handle some of my information being availible online where others can see it. I just took it as a given that there were bad people out there looking for victims. These kids don't.
Maybe they can't learn the danger. I've had girls argue that they realistically should be able to dress like strippers, go anywhere and not even get cat calls. Sorry, but as much as I'd like to live in such a peaceful world, you cannot do that and be safe. You have to live with the realization that there are evil people out there who are quite willing to hurt you and yours. You have to live like you live in a world with both great good and beauty and great evil and ugliness.
I think that the idealized vision of childhood that many parents have has contributed to these kids not understanding what is going on. The girls in particular are almost totally incapable of understanding that that 25 year old who wants to have a "heart-to-heart" conversation with a 15 year old is probably just trying to get some. They're special, the other girls aren't. I for one will disabuse any daughter of mine of this princess complex.
Until parents raise their kids to become adults capable of living in a world where evil people exist and desire to screw over everyone else, no one will learn, and at this point I don't care. It's like the people who still get sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement. You knew the danger, you did it anyway. MySpace isn't the problem, the teens and their parents are the problems. Maybe if parents would stop thinking about the kids and **DO** something about the kids, they'd be safe and more mature. As always, it's easier to do nothing, complain and foist the problem onto others. It's your computer, your teen, your problem.
.... How about partents take some responsiblity for what their kids surf?
Nah. Won't work. Too much effort on their part.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
On a less dangerous, but still serious note-
Myspace needs a discalimer that says "this site may be hazardous to your career"
There is a rash of mid twenties people on there, and they post risque pics and comments. And guess what, someone in your office, has checked out myspace looking for people from work. And although you may act professional and dress conservatively at work, those pics from myspace with you in your short skirt and hitting a bong will get passed around the office. And right or wrong, it will change people's perceptions of you....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Last I checked, MySpace isn't supposed to be open to those under the age of 18... which is why all of the 13 year olds on there have a profile that says that they're 23. Those under 18 are ineligible to sign up. Perhaps these letters to parents should mention that their children are lying about their age in the first place to sign in, instead of implying the MySpace isn't protecting their children.
The term "czar" has a special place in the lexicon of politics, both corporate and government. Whenever there's a situation that has no fix (or no fix that can be reasonably attained), the powers-that-be appoint a czar to oversee the situation.
For example, in the US govt there are appointed Drug Czars, Immigration Czars, Energy Czars, Education Czars, and a whole bunch of Czar's who oversee areas of policy that are not really meant to be improved, but still need to be shown as something that is being addressed and taken care of. Appointed Czar's usually have no power, very little budget, and are all show, appointed for the purpose of silencing and placating critics. The Czars don't actually have to "fix" anything, since the areas of policy that they're "put in charge of" are literally beyond fixing. They just have to show up to work and fight the good fight; in this way, the powers-that-be can say that they're doing something about the problem, while not actually having to allocate any significant resources to fix anything.
So, when MySpace (or any other company or organization) appoints a Czar to make everyone safer, take it with a grain of salt. Czar is code word for "fuck off, critics, you're in the way of higher profit and/or control over our subjects".
Just my $0.02
Governments are not necessary.
Life is NOT, repeat, NOT safe. No matter how much you may try to child-proof it. People die. It's inevitable. Some die peacefully in their sleep, some die horrible bloody violent deaths. It's all a crapshoot. Throw incredible stupidity into the mix, and you have the human condition. It exists on the net, and anywhere and everywhere else you have people.
And BTW, your FOAF story reeks of bullshit to me.
Hey, dipshit! Yeah, you, Mr. Safety Czar.
How about you start telling parents to raise their own freaking kids properly instead of pushing this crap off on the rest of us?
Personally, I don't give half a pitcher of warm spit about Myspace or the people who frequent it. Seems to me, though, that the problem of 13 year old girls either turning into emo train wrecks because it's 'cool' or flying to zimbabwe to meet sexual predators could be much more easily uprooted at the source.
That is, the 13 year old teenage girls.
..."think of the children" is the tiredest mantra for controlling everything and anything.
They're looking for the thrill. Kids are reckless. The kids that get in trouble on the internet are the same ones that would get in trouble at the mall or wherever. If they end up as drug-addicted sex slaves because of some chatroom troll, they'd probably end up there anyway with some dude they met at the local foodcourt. People don't like admitting that because it implies they're bad parents, so they run off and try to sterilize the entire world--and won't do a damned bit of good because it's a moving target. Teenagers are in it for the thrill. Remove it and both they and the predators will move somewhere else. Education is the only answer and, sadly, no matter how much you try to protect the children and control the adults that prey on them, many will still get into trouble.
OTOH, "we have realized that there is a problem and we will do your parenting for you" is very likely to be a PR coup. Since that's apparently what parents want, anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
'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
... Ahhh ... Where can I sign up?
so free advertising for MySpace targeted at their #1 demographic? See kids, MySpace is dangerous. Oooh
"Teachers leave us kids alone
I would like it better if Myspace appointed a "pages-that-don't-cause-my-browser-to-buffer-overr un-and-implode-cazr" Seriously, those assholes who have 10 inline videos running at the same time should be lined up and shot.
Facebook isn't anywhere nearly as hazardous as myspace.
For starters, the only people who can view your profile are those who go to your school or you have explicitly listed as a friend. You can also choose to restrict access to your profile even further to people at your school you have listed as friends, etc.... Facebook takes it a step further by customizing who can see what. Rigt now, anybody can see my picture, musical tastes, and other generic information -- only friends can see anything personal beyond that (phone numbers, screen names, email addresses, etc.)
Likewise, facebook has a basic user-authentication scheme that prevents you from registering unless you have a university email account. It's not completely foolproof, but works well enough to block out virtually all online predators.
In the case of the student you mention, this means that the girl was either 'friends' with the assailant, or he went to the same school. In either case, that leaves him with plenty of other information sources to find her personal information.
I go to a tiny liberal arts college. Everybody knows everybody as it is. Anything on my facebook could easily be figured out from other public information sources (Campus Phonebook, etc...). In a large (20,000+) university, I could see that privacy might be an issue, but here, it simply isn't.
Likewise, facebook is a tad 'cleaner' than myspace by preventing users from using any sort of markup (HTML,CSS,Javascript, etc.) in their profiles.
Comparing facebook to myspace is like comparing apples to oranges. Anyone trying to stalk on facebook is wasting their time. Facebook is for networking with people you know (innocuous). Myspace is for meeting new people you've never met (sketch)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose