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."

MySpace PSAs?

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

Shoot.

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

Re:Shoot.

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."

Re:responsible design

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.

Then disable them from hotlinking via http.conf or .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.

We don't need legislation when a simple google search and a copy/paste would solve your issues.

Re:responsible design

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.

Re:Parents

Problem is those teens don't have a clue what they're risking. Kids, girls especially, think attention equals respect, and "OMG U R SO BEUTIFULLLLLLLL" is good enough for them. So they do whatever gets them attention, and on the internet the best way for a girl to get attention is to be a cyberslut.

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.

Yes, all true, but...

..."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.

This just in...

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.

MySpace To Be Made Safer For Users

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

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?

What's next? Overlords?

Well, at least they'll be welcomed.

Re:What it is with this Administration and Czars?

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

Good Candidate for Safety Czar

Dick Cheney

Michael Brown is your man!

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

-Eric

What do you mean exposing children to predators?

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

Re:What do you mean exposing children to predators

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....

the world isnt that ugly

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 dangers are real

While it may seem silly, the dangers explained in the article are reality. Myspace has 56 million users [myspace.com]. 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" [facebook.com] (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.

The dangers are real EVERYWHERE.

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.

Daily Show Clip

There's a hysterical clip [nyu.edu] from the Daily Show about this very topic. Wait for the punch line at the end.

Maybe they can't learn

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.

Here's a radical concept.....

.... How about partents take some responsiblity for what their kids surf?

Nah. Won't work. Too much effort on their part.

Misleading title

When I read the article title, I thought it was going to be made safer from a technical viewpoint. A little too much freedom is given in page design, resulting in the ultimate stress test for loading images in a single page in FireFox, over-decoration of a web page to the point of unreadability(how do you get a 50% pixel covering OVER an entire web page?), and the possibilities of trojans,etc.

What myspace needs(besides bandwidth) is a "safe mode" where it uses the default CSS layout.

What will he prevent?

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?

Perhaps I'm missing something....

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.

"Czar" has a double meaning

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

There's a case about this RIGHT NOW in Honolulu

The mom and stepdad of a 14-year-old boy were, um, not amused to see a 30-year-old guy their son had met on MySpace. At 11:30 PM. In their son's bed. And he'd brought a gay porn DVD and 2 gay porn magazines with him, how thoughtful. Of course, since Hawaii raised its age of consent from 14 to 16 a few years back, said 30-year-old is now in deep shit, and will probably stay so for a "nui loa" time.

Linkage:

Police arrest man found in teen's bed [starbulletin.com], Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Man Accused Of Luring Teen On MySpace.com [thehawaiichannel.com], KITV-4
Man accused of using internet website to meet teen [khon.com], KHON-2
Hawaii Too Soft On Online Predators? [kgmb9.com], KGMB-9
Man, 30, indicted in sex assault on teen [honoluluadvertiser.com], Honolulu Advertiser

Free Advertising

'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

so free advertising for MySpace targeted at their #1 demographic? See kids, MySpace is dangerous. Oooh ... Ahhh ... Where can I sign up?

I've seen very few sane people on Myspace

My sister has an account, and I created one named "Tom Therapist" (Tom The rapist) to see if she would accept his friend invite. She is 14 and my "character", Tom, was 29. He had no information listed, other than his name and age. She accepted, and she has waaaay too much personal info on her myspace.