News for the Week of May 25, 2008
This week, a look at "mini-MySpaces," and how these DIY social-networking sites may affect child safety...
Mini-MySpaces
A year ago I wrote "Mini-MySpaces: Social Web's new phase" about how anyone could create his own social-networking site on Ning.com. Last month I blogged about competitors to Ning offering would-be social site owners more options. This week Google further upped the ante in announcing Friend Connect, allowing people to add social-networking features to any existing blog or Web site for free. So now it's really true that there could be as many social-networking sites in the world as there are Internet users. Because we've arrived at where creating a blog, a Web page, or a social-networking site is as cut-'n'-paste a proposition as using Word. This is fabulous for artists, retailers, hobbyists, etc. who want to involve their friends.
Child-safety implications
You could say that as opportunities for self-expression grow, so unfortunately do opportunities for pranks, harassment, defamation, etc. in the social Web's mirror of "real life." Have the US's state attorneys general thought about age verification for every young Web site owner or blogger and somehow making them as well as MySpace and Facebook impose it on every visitor to their sites? The other issue hardly anybody in the US talks about is how international the social Web is. Do US attorneys general think any law or technology could require social networkers in other countries to be carded at the door of US-based social sites - or overseas sites to verify the ages of US-based users? Here's the Washington Post on this development.
In other news...
- Felony charges for teen in nude photo posting. A 17-year-old boy in La Crosse, Wisc., has been charged with possession of child pornography, sexual exploitation of a child, and defamation for posting nude photos of a 16-year-old girl on his MySpace page, the Chicago Tribune reports . "According to the criminal complaint, Phillips was told he could be jailed for posting the photos but told police he would still keep them on the page." According to MyFoxTwinCities.com, the girl, his ex-girlfriend, had taken the photos of herself "but was upset and didn't give him permission to distribute the photos anywhere else." The boy is being held in a county jail "on a $1,000 cash bond and has a preliminary hearing set for May 28." According to some reports, the photos were sent to him via cellphone (see this on nude photo-sharing). In a similar case reported last August, a teen was sentenced to 30 days in prison on child abuse charges (see this item).
- 'Culture of responsibility' for the social Web. This deserves notice: "What we need in response to this and other equally alarming cases is a new culture of responsibility where government, industry, schools, parents and the kids themselves share differing and overlapping responsibilities for what happens online so that Megan's untimely death is not repeated, nor the emergence of a cyber lynch mob ever needed again," wrote Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute, in the Huffington Post>. He was referring to what the most intelligent response to the Megan Meier tragedy (see "Indictment in Megan Meier case" here) would be. I agree wholeheartedly. It's the next phase of online-safety advocacy: calling for and contributing to a concerted collective effort toward an online culture of responsibility - a sense of citizenship online as well as off - starting with the first references to it at home and school.
- Targeted Web ads & critical thinking. "Behavioral targeting," believe it or not, could be a great topic for family discussion. Sounds like a big, nasty sociological term, but it's really about critical thinking, or knowing how others might be trying to manipulate us. When teens are wise to that, they know how to protect themselves from manipulation. Anyway, behavioral targeting is quite likely happening to Web users at your house, and the Federal Trade Commission is actually looking into it, the Washington Post reports. Here's what it is, very basically: Internet companies tracking people's Web search behavior and visits to special-interest Web sites in order to target them with ads (read the article to see exactly how with people planning weddings). Here are the two sides of the debate: "while public interest groups argue that compiling profiles of largely unsuspecting Internet users ought to be illegal, online advertisers and publishers respond that their ad targeting tactics protect privacy and may be essential to support the free content on the Web." Indeed, there is money in it, as highly targeted audiences (aka those mostly likely to make purchases) are very valuable to sellers.
- Online high school: Rapid growth. By 2019, half of all courses in grades 9-12 will be delivered online, according to Enrollment in online classes, according to the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. But for data closer to today, "enrollment in online classes last year reached the 1 million mark, growing 22 times the level seen in 2000," the Christian Science Monitor reports, citing figures from the North American Council for Online Learning. The efficiency of distance learning, the low cost of delivering, and its flexibility for students who do better outside of conventional school are reasons cited for its rapid growth. Of course, states are all over the map in what they allow and require. Check out the article for details and note the views of professor Luis Huerta at Columbia University and researcher David Reed at Arizona State University.
