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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."
I guess it's back to trenchcoats, candy, and schoolyards for me.
Trolling is a art,
Have you seen Myspace? It's the 13 year old whorish girls who are talking about their sex lives and their 13 year old boyfriends who want to be pimps who are the dangerous ones on Myspace. That situation makes it a magnet for sex predators, but Myspace seems to be the catalyst for self-destruction as well as a forum for sex predators to find easy (and willing) targets
Kids think it'll never happen to them. Kidnapping, rape, murder...no matter how many times it happens to people who do the exact same things they do, kids tell themselves that it can't happen to them because they're smarter than that. They're in control. They don't understand that they are completely out of control, and they don't grasp the concept of consequences.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
While it may seem silly, the dangers explained in the article are reality. Myspace has 56 million users. With all of the personal information I have seen on profiles, it is only expectable that it is misused someday.
A few months ago, a friend of a student at my school experienced a horrible ordeal. Her best friend was murdered and raped by an assaulter who had obtained her personal information from her "Facebook" (another popular--mainly among college students--online community service).
Either way, I find it absurd how much people disclose on their profiles. I won't post any links, but people have their addresses, home phone numbers, and--the perfect appetizer for an attacker--half-dressed pictures. I don't know about you, but that smells like trouble to me.
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.
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
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.
English is easier said than done.
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.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
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?
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.