« Research Study: Internet Access Spreads While Computing Power Gets Concentrated in Wealthy Countries | Main | Turkey Trip Cancelled »
March 22, 2006
Nancy Willard's MySpace Adventure
Online child safety advocate Nancy Willard recently had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of MySpace.com, the extraordinarily popular online community that's been a lightning rod for controversy in recent months. Nancy posted a summary of her visit to my WWWEDU discussion forum; she was kind enough to allow me and other list members to repost her report. Here's the full text of what she wrote.
On Monday, I had a personal visit to MySpace headquarters. They invited me for a meeting to seek my guidance on responding to Internet safety and responsible use issues. I want to report to you on what I saw and what I think. I think the members of these three discussion groups know that I am quite apt to speak my mind. ;-)I will tell you I was impressed by the efforts MySpace is taking to address the recognized Internet safety and responsible use concerns and believe in their sincerity.
Here is what I witnessed and was told:
When abuse complaints come in, they are sent to a special team of responders who have had specific training in addressing abuse issues. There is also some specialization within this team.
They have specific procedures to promptly respond to legal subpoenas. They showed me the chart of the numbers of subpoenas and it is increasing exponentially each month. Incredible chart.
They have one staff member, a young man, who is assigned to work with school discussion groups and school concerns. They have public groups associated with schools on their system. There are currently 25,000 +- They seek a student from the school to serve as a moderator and try to pick a student who appears to them to be a "school leader" based on an application. The moderator's job is to contact MySpace if any issues of concern arise. I think it will be very helpful for schools to find out whether there is a public group for the school and who the moderator is. It is likely that the public group will attract the school's "in-crowd" and that other groups of kids within the school may set up their own public or private groups. (This would be fascinating sociological research.) A staff person who has a good relationship with the student moderator could contact this student and simply offer any assistance, should the need arise. This needs to be done respectfully -- in support of this student's leadership potential. Reviewing the comments in this discussion group will provide insight into the school community from the eyes of some of the students.
This MySpace staff person also works with administrators and school resource officers if they contact MySpace about a school concern. I have spoken with a couple of school resource officers who have had dealings with MySpace and they told me they were very pleased with the quality of the response and service. This young man appeared to be very sincere and competent -- but also very young and without any actual school experience.
He and his supervisor reflected some concerns with the manner in which school officials were contacting them. One major concern -- which I am going to take some significant actions to address -- is that sometimes administrators contact the company for assistance but the administrator cannot tell them the specific location of the concerning material. Why? BECAUSE THE ADMINISTRATOR IS BLOCKED FROM ACCESSING THE SITE! This is outrageous folks and will have to be promptly addressed. A parent calls the school and reports "My child is being threatened." I saw some material that makes me concerned about possible suicide." or the like and the administrator, counselor, or school resource officer can't go to the site to make an assessment. This is unacceptable. I am going to try to work through the US Dept of Ed and other channels to alert schools to get this situation changed. These three staff positions in each school must have override rights and capabilities. This is essential. (And I am embarrassed that I did not detect this as a concern earlier.)
MySpace has a text monitoring system that they use to detect possible concerns, including under age members, gang text or symbols, threats, and the like. They remove 1800 to 2000 under age profiles per day that they have identified. They also review all of the images posted on the site soon after they are posted. This is a monumental task -- not a job I would want. The images are on a screen that the reviewer can control. That has the facility for the reviewer to indicate that the image or the profile of the person posting the image should be deleted. They review videos prior to posting -- taking miscellaneous screen shots from the video. This level of review is not going to take down provocative pictures (eg Britanny Spears-like press photos).
They have new instructions on their site that provide guidance for parents seeking to remove the profile of their child. http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/misc/RemovingChildProfiles.html. This situation presents some difficulties. If they responded to every request that appears to come from a parent to remove a profile, someone could impersonate a parent for the purpose of bullying. Or they could get into the middle of a custodial parent dispute. My assessment is that the way they are proceeding is the only possible way to address the concern.
The MySpace folks are very interested in the fact that I am working on a book for parents, because they really want to see more parents engaged in appropriate parenting. I think MySpace is really doing a lot to address the safety and responsible use concerns. But parents should not expect MySpace or any other web site to do their job for them!!! These sites are not babysitting operations.
MySpace staff appear to have a good understanding of the concerns and are reaching out to me and others to seek even better ways to address the concerns. The see increased education of parents and youth as the answer. The challenge will be to get parents and youth to pay attention.
There are some significant social issues involved with these kinds of online activities that will absolutely require education and parental involvement. Actually, they will also require massive social change to really work, but I am not holding my breath.
Teens are clearly using places like MySpace to establish social status. How do young males establish social status? By posting manly, daring images and information that demonstrate independence and bravery and by being listed as a friend on as many profiles of "hot girls" as possible. And how do girls establish social status? By posting sexually provocative pictures and titillating information that attracts the attention and friendship links of manly guys. How does any teen attract attention? By posting hot, intimate information. The teens who are into playing these games are the ones who are most likely playing these games on places like MySpace. These are the same kinds of games that are going on every day in the hallways of middle and high schools. Some of the students are really into playing these games and others are not. My hope is that we can find better ways to use these environments for more socially beneficial uses. How about getting online teens focused on tasks that would seek to alleviate problems associated with poverty in third world villages?
I am going to be working on a brief document for schools that addresses some of the things I think they should be doing in relation to these communities -- starting first with override privileges.
Thanks again to Nancy for allowing me to republish it.
Posted by acarvin at March 22, 2006 3:33 PM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
