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Friday Feb 17, 2006
Making MySpace safe
Wanted: 'safety czar' to control the behaviour of 54 million young people.As a response to the criticism it's received from parents, teachers, and politicians, NewsCorp-owned community site MySpace is looking to appoint a kind of online enforcer to try and make the site less dangerous for its younger users. (Report in the Wall Street Journal).
The safety czar will:
"launch an education campaign that may include letters to schools and public-service announcements to encourage children not to reveal their contact information. It also is considering limiting access to certain groups, such as "swingers," to those over 18; blocking search terms that predators could use to locate kids; and encouraging users between 14 and 16 to make their profiles "private," meaning they can only be viewed by people they already know."Which all sounds pretty sensible, but it's not quite as simple as that. The reason why MySpace is such an incredible success (and why it feels like a frightening, anarchic world to most adults) is that it is pretty much lawless. Almost anything goes and the users can write what they want and talk to whoever they want. Clamp down on this and you risk sending your userbase off somewhere else.
On TheSite.org forums finding the right place to draw the line is an every-day task. Mostly, we let anything go - so long as users aren't overly nasty to each other. But we know that if we don't step in from time to time, then an unsafe environment is possible. Go the other way and you very quickly alienate your users and send them packing.
Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 6:22 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
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