Friday, April 16, 2010
What Facebook does with abuse reports
Labels: CEOP, Facebook, panic button, report abuse
Embarrasing photos in Facebook: What to do
Labels: Facebook, online reputations, photo sharing, reputation management
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Facebook No. 1 in most Asian countries, but...
Labels: Cyworld, Facebook, global social networking, Mixi, Orkut, social media research
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Facebook: Why a Safety Center, not a 'panic button'
But this "panic button" concept is really problematic – and not just because of the word "panic," which suggests brains in crisis mode, with all rational thought switched off. Here's why it's problematic:
Having said all that, everybody can thank all parties to this agreement for an important pilot test we all need to watch. Not before in history has there been a service playing host to the visual socializing of 400 million users in multiple countries, much less developing some sort of reporting system for when something in all that socializing goes wrong – the online version of dial-911 or -999 (UK) but for many more kinds of "wrong" (not just the criminal kind). I don't know about CEOP, but our NCMEC has a CyberTipline.com, a sort of online 911 service, and it still tells people to call their local 911 service in emergencies. Physical proximity is still and always will be a factor when people need help – so just what is the role of a global online service, here? We all – social-Web companies, their users of all ages, parents, educators, law enforcement, risk prevention practitioners, psychologists, etc. – need to figure this out together. It just won't work if the onus is placed only on companies', or law enforcement's, or policymakers' shoulders – not in a highly participatory, grassroots-driven media environment.
But for heaven's sake – or even better, for youth's sake – let's please take the "panic" out of this whole important test. It simply doesn't lend itself to the calm, mutually respectful conversations that help youth develop the critical thinking that protects on the social Web. We had our predator panic on this side of the pond starting in 2006. At the Family Online Safety Institute's annual conference in Washington last fall, the Net-safety field declared it over with a strong consensus that scary messaging is not productive. Why? Because it makes young people less inclined to want to come to us for help. They tend to get as far away as possible from scared, overreacting adults; find workarounds that are readily available to them; and then leave us out of the equation right when loving, steady parent-child communication is most needed. The other reason is, even the research shows fear tactics don't work (see "Let's not create a cyberbullying panic" at CNET).
[Disclosure: Facebook is a supporter of a nonprofit project I help run, ConnectSafely.org, but I so hope you've seen in the above that that's not why I've blogged about this issue.]
Related links
Labels: CACRC, CEOP, David Finkelhor, Facebook, FOSI, panic button, predator panic, Safety Center
Friday, April 02, 2010
Lots of underage social networkers
Labels: COPPA, Facebook, Ofcom, social network sites
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Can the social Web be policed?
Here's the view from Australia, where the Sydney Morning Herald reports some cruel defacement of tribute pages in Facebook have gotten Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to consider "appointing an online ombudsman to deal with social networking issues." [Maybe that's where we're headed: countries having ombudsmen able to decide if complaints in their countries should be "escalated" to their specially appointed contacts at social sites at home and abroad? But what about sleazy social-media operations that fly under the radar or refuse to deal?]
Certainly it's understandable that people expect more from social network sites than they do from phone companies because bullying is more public and harder to take back, but is the expectation logical? That's an honest question, not a rhetorical one (please comment here or in the ConnectSafely forum), because what does not seem to be different in this new media environment is how arguments and bad behavior get resolved: by the people involved. It may take time with complaints sent from among tens and in some cases hundreds of millions of users, but fake defaming profiles and hate groups do get deleted by reputable social network sites like MySpace and Facebook. Deleting the visible representation of bullying behavior, however, doesn't change much. Bullies can put up new fake profiles as quickly as – often more quickly than – the original ones can be taken down.
Of course we should expect companies to be responsible and take such action, but can we reasonably blame them if doing so has no effect on the underlying behavior? What court cases like the one in Italy against Google executives for an awful bullying video on YouTube that the court felt wasn't taken down fast enough (see the article in the Washington Post above) illustrate are: humanity's struggle to wrap its collective brain around a new, truly global, user-driven medium where the "content" is not just social but behavioral – and the full spectrum of human behavior at that.
If you do, please comment, but I know of no real solution to social cruelty on the social Web as yet except a concerted effort on the part of the portion of humanity that cares to adjust to this strange, sometimes scary new media environment by adjusting our thinking and behavior. That includes teaching children from the earliest age, at home and school, social literacy as well as tech and media literacy (social literacy involves citizenship, civility, ethics, and critical thinking about what they upload as much as download) – as well as modeling them for our children. Can it be that universal, multi-generational behavior modification is not just an ideal, but the only logical goal? What am I missing, here?
Labels: Facebook, free speech, MySpace, new media, social media, user-driven Web
Monday, February 08, 2010
Fresh social-Web & Net numbers
Labels: comScore, Facebook, Nielsen, social media research, social Web
Facebook's orders of magnitude of change
My theory is, that fairly spare original design as a utility made it less flexible for individual users but more flexible for users as a whole – in other words for the changes that going from mere hundreds to hundreds of millions would entail. A pretty bare-bones social utility (like Twitter, too, as opposed to MySpace, which was always more of a self-expression tool than a social utility) is simply a person's social network visualized. [If this makes no sense, pls let me know or post your own theory in comments below.] "In its latest redesign, Facebook is playing up applications, games and search," USATODAY reports. That makes sense to me, because apps and games are one way users can customize their FB experience, and search becomes paramount simply because of the challenge of finding someone among 400 million users – but also grows the tension between those concerned about privacy and those who want to be found by old friends and long-lost relatives. For those concerned about privacy, by the way, here's a very handy how-to article: "The Three Facebook [privacy] Settings Every User Should Check Now": the ones concerning who can see what you share (updates, photos, etc.), who can see your personal info, and who can search for and find your FB profile with Web search engines.
Labels: design changes, Facebook, Facebook birthday, Internet population, privacy, social media
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
What's the deal with Farmville?
Labels: apps, Facebook, FarmVille, social gaming, Zynga
Friday, January 15, 2010
Social Web's help for Haiti
Labels: earthquake relief, Facebook, Haiti, mobile technology, social media, texting, twitter
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
YouTube, Facebook & friends' videos
Labels: Facebook, Facebook Connect, YouTube
Monday, December 21, 2009
Teens taking Facebook breaks together
Labels: adolescent development, Facebook, High School, Internet addiction
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Facebook's privacy changes
As for what's entailed: Everybody will eventually experience a little "wizard" window that'll pop up and say they have to configure their settings (if they've already done so, they can keep their current ones, and the wizard will show you what they are). Having seen the process, I can say it's very easy – if it seems annoying, only a small annoyance. All in all, the changes – straight from the horse's mouth – are:
Facebook says these changes "have no impact" on the site's advertising system or how it makes money. For the company's own thinking behind the changes, see Facebook's Ana Muller's blog post here, and pls see Larry's CNET piece for much more detail than I have here. In related news, ConnectSafely.org has been appointed to Facebook's new Safety Advisory Board. Here's CNN's coverage.
Labels: Chris Kelly, Facebook, online privacy, privacy features, redesign
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
NY predators deleted from Facebook, MySpace
Labels: Andrew Cuomo, Facebook, MySpace, predators, social networking
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
'How to bully-proof yourself on Facebook'
Labels: Archives of Pediatrics, cyberbullying, Facebook, social networking, tips
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Vietnamese fear Facebook blockage
Labels: censorship, Facebook, government policy, social media, Vietnam
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Social gaming cleaning up its act?
Labels: Facebook, FarmVille, social gaming, Zynga
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Adults' status updates on the rise: Study
Labels: Facebook, Pew Internet, social networking, status updates, twitter
Friday, October 23, 2009
MySpace's focus on music
Labels: Facebook, MySpace Music, Owen Van Natta, social media, social networking
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
UK online youth study on 'hybrid lives': Not
Labels: Facebook, hybrid lives, social media research, YouthNet
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
A call to action on eating disorder sites
The other issue is that social networking complicates the issue. Not only is this not just about Web sites but profiles and pages in social sites and on mobile phone networks, and all of the above based in other countries. Further complexity is evident in the pages, profiles, and sites themselves, which display both pro and con positions at the same time. In a story about the migration from secret sites to social-network ones, Newsweek cites the view of Dr. Steven Crawford at the Center for Eating Disorders in Baltimore, who "sees the openness of the Facebook site as part of its appeal. Increasing numbers of teenage patients at the center are joining Facebook groups that proclaim their disorders to the world, which Crawford believes is a means of adolescent rebellion." Dartmouth Prof. Marcia Herrin, author of several books on the subject, "finds the public nature of the discussions of anorexia on Facebook encouraging, because it shows that teens are less afraid of confronting eating disorders," Newsweek adds. Facebook says it actively searches for and deletes pro-ED groups because, in supporting self-harm, they violate its terms of use.
This past June, Liz Jones, a columnist for the Daily Mail in the UK, wrote about her 40-year battle with anorexia and a normal-eating experiment she conducted for three weeks. It's just one person's story but maybe sheds some light: "I found the gnawing, tight knot that is always in my stomach – fear of life, work, boys, social interaction – was quietened when I starved it.... I might not have been good at anything else – relationships, sport, conversation – but I have been really good at being thin.... That's the thing about being a borderline anorexic: it makes you feel superior, clean, morally unimpeachable. It isn't a whole lot of fun, endlessly disappointing friends who invite you for lunch. My spartan lifestyle ... has kept me tiny, but it has also isolated me.... I'd rather be thin than happy or healthy." [See also my 2007 interview with "Hannah" about her anorexic friend and "Sarah's Death at 19 Left Her Family Struggling to Understand the Power of an Eating Disorder" in the Washington Post last spring.]
Labels: eating disorders, Facebook, pro-ana, pro-mia, Royal College of Psychiatrists
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
How mobile is Facebook?
Labels: cellphones, Facebook, mobiles, smart phones
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Voice chat for Facebook users
Labels: audio chat, Facebook, Vivox, voice chat
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Fleeing Facebook?
Labels: Facebook
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Facebook & Ottawa reach privacy agreement
I hope this agreement is a precedent for how governments and social-media companies work together. Not so much in terms of threatened legal action (though of course not to be ruled out) as in where governments get their information. The Sun reports that the Canadian government's "privacy probe began last year when the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa filed an 11-part complaint, alleging Facebook violated key provisions of Canada's private-sector privacy law." The model, here, is reputable companies working with informed policymakers from a basis of understanding the risks involved and arriving at what companies can in fact do about them.
Labels: Canadian law, Facebook, privacy commissioner
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Facebook sued for being a social-network site
Anyway, lots of kids under 13 lie about their age and set up social network accounts – mostly because they're at an age when life is getting very social and social networking is now part of kids' social lives. Responsible social network sites have the age-13 minimum because of COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), which created that somewhat artificial barrier. But – even with the technology that MySpace and Facebook apply to under-age detection – parents are infinitely better at "detecting" their kids' social-Web activities and deciding what's appropriate. I can't imagine a judge who knows anything about social media saying anything different. Looks like Facebook can't either, because, according to the AFP, the site "has dismissed the lawsuit as being without merit and promised a legal battle."
Labels: California, Facebook, lawsuit, online privacy, Terms of Service
Sunday, August 09, 2009
MySpace's metamorphosis?
MySpace has big plans for its music channel, which just could become the tail that wags the dog. The music site's president, Courtney Holt, who left MTV for MySpace Music last November, "plans to make the site a data goldmine for figuring out what's going to be the next big thing in pop music – helpful not only to artists and users, but producers and agents, too," reports the New York Observer. MySpace's music community will "publish trends, track influencers and create lists of top-played and playlisted content of not only major bands and artists but also of all the independent work on millions of MySpace artist pages," the Observer adds. "If done right, they could create a new kind of Top 40 hit list for online music."
My husband Ron, an avid music fan, said, "I'm surprised it has taken MySpace this long!" and I think he's right. It is, after all, a social site where tunes are talking points in ongoing conversations between artists and their fans. "They could blow iTunes out of the water – iTunes is too corporate, and Genius [its software that finds new songs according to users' past purchases] is robotic," Ron added. It's like a videogamer playing against software in the game as opposed to other gamers in multiplayer online games. Dealing with fellow humans is just a lot more interesting. As if to confirm this, Gigaom reports that "iTunes needs to get social" and is planning to provide provide "a more interactive album-purchasing experience."
MySpace's built-in opportunity
Anastasia Goodstein over at YPulse.com seems to agree that MySpace is at a turning point. "Everything I've read lately about how MySpace is planning to reposition itself makes me optimistic that the site could emerge stronger than ever by literally going back to its roots of being a hub for young tastemakers," she writes.
Certainly Facebook "won the social networking war," as Anastasia put it, but Facebook is more a utility (a social utility) that everybody needs than the self-expression tool or canvas that MySpace has always been, something that works better for a smaller, more vertical user base (my last post on this is here) and as such can look messy at times. Its new CEO, Owen Van Natta, recently said in London that it intends to be a “window for the youth (16-30) to reflect all their creative talents,” The Telegraph reports. That fits the latest Nielsen research, since "people between the ages of 12 and 17 were 2.4 time more likely than the average active Internet user to visit music.myspace.com [last month]," and visitors 18-24 were 2.2 times more likely to.
I'm not idealizing things – it's a full range of self-expression, from porn-queen wannabe pages to serious graphic design (of MySpace profiles). But there are many opportunities for positive self-expression in MySpace, as well as for exposure to creativity represented in the service's media communities. [See also "MySpace's PR problem" and "Boys & girls on Web 2.0."]
Comparisons
Eszter Hargittai at Northwestern University recently release some fresh data comparing MySpace and Facebook use among first-year college students. She relates two main findings: 1) Besides a general increase the use of Facebook since 2007 (when 79% of first-year students surveyed used Facebook, compared to 87% now; compared to 55% using MySpace then and 36% now), 2) "we continue to see ethnic and racial differences as well as different usage by parental education (a proxy for socioeconomic status). Students of Hispanic origin are more likely to use MySpace than others and less likely to use Facebook than others. Asian-American students are the least likely to be on MySpace." For danah boyd's findings on ethnic and socioeconomic differences, from talking with teens around the country, see also "Does Social Networking Breed Social Division?"
"Regarding parental education," Hargittai writes, "the relatively small number (7%) of students in the sample whose parents have less than a high school education are much more likely to be on MySpace and much less likely to be on Facebook than others." Here's one mother's very balanced view of social networking.
Labels: Eszter Hargittai, Facebook, MySpace Music, Owen Van Natta, social media research
Thursday, August 06, 2009
How a police officer uses Facebook
Labels: Facebook, law enforcement, participatory culture, Scott Mills, social media
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
India's digital natives
Labels: digital natives, Facebook, India, MySpace, Orkut, social media research
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Teacher's Facebook 'teachable moment'
Labels: Facebook, school discipline, school policy, teachable moment, teachers
Monday, July 06, 2009
Russia's avid social networkers
Labels: Facebook, international social networking, MySpace, Russia, Vkontakte
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Facebook's new public/private feature
Labels: Facebook, privacy features, privacy practices
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Why Gen Y's not into Twitter?
Labels: Derek Baird, Facebook, Generation Y, social networking, twitter
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Will India switch to Facebook?
Labels: Facebook, India, international social networking, Orkut
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Facebook: No. 1 tool for parenting? Maybe. Use wisely.
Labels: Aseem Mehta, B.J. Fogg, Facebook, Linda Phillips, Lisa Belkin, parenting, Sharon Cindrich, social media
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Facebook *not* bad for grades: Study
Labels: academic performance, Facebook, FirstMonday, grades, social media research
Friday, April 17, 2009
Teen social-networking fatigue?
Responding to that, YPulse founder and youth marketing blogger Anastasia Goodstein wrote in her blog that "it may be that teens aren't necessarily going somewhere else; they’re just spending less time on social networks and more time socializing in real life, texting, etc. That makes sense to me, that Facebook (and for many teens MySpace) will need to move over and make room for the growing number of other tools in their social toolbox - an important one, nonetheless, because it does represent a tool *bundle* (email, real-time chat, asynchronous wall comments, etc.). So it may be kind of naïve and adult to think there has to be a single new place or technology teens will adopt en masse, (though social networking was like that back in 2005, that was then, this is now). [Other noteworthy FB numbers: though no longer the fastest-growing, 18-to-25-year-olds are still the biggest population segment of Facebook by far (43%), parents may be interested to know that 13-to-17-year-olds make up only 12% of the FB population.] There's more on social-networking fatigue, enthusiasm, and ambivalence at Yahoo News. And from the "This just in!" Department: comScore just released data showing that Facebook now accounts for about a third of all online social networking worldwide and 4.1 out of every 100 minutes we all spend online, The Guardian reports.
Labels: Anastasia Goodstein, danah boyd, Facebook, MySpace, social networking fatigue
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Facebook users have lower grades?
Monday, April 06, 2009
Facebook friend saves suicidal teen
Labels: Facebook, hotlines, MySpace, social networking, suicide, suicide prevention, Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Teens' online friends = offline friends: Study
Labels: connected teens, Facebook, MySpace, research, social media research, social networking
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Cellphones = wireless connected computers
Labels: cellphones, Facebook, landlines, mobile social networking, mobile technology, MySpace
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Schools: How to handle group cyberbullying?
My question is, what do you think school officials should've done? In California, a new law gives schools authority to suspend or expel students for cyberbullying, but as I read through these cases - saw their complexities and how hard it is for schools to know exactly how the argument started, who started it, how many students are involved, whether the victim was the original instigator, or even whether it was staged for the instigators' instant fame online - I think suspension is like a blunt-instrument approach that of course punishes some involved but discourages students from reporting such cases in the future and doesn't resolve what the argument was about. The schools were right to call parents. But tell me if you agree that the schools could also turn incidents like this into "teachable moments" in the form of school assemblies about all possible implications of taking fights public online. In such assemblies or in digital citizenship instruction, schools might teach students the three basic types of leadership behavior described by Nancy Willard of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use: "speaking out against the harm, reporting the harm to an adult who is in a position to intervene, and helping the targeted student." Would appreciate your thoughts - via comments here or in our forum at ConnectSafely.org. Feel free, too, to email them to me via anne(at)netfamilynews.org.
Labels: cyberbullying, cyberbullying prevention, Facebook, Facebook groups, Palo Alto, school discipline
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Parental social networkers multiplying
Labels: email, Facebook, international social networking, mobile social networking, MySpace, social networking
Friday, March 06, 2009
Facebook: 'Facelift,' lawsuit
Labels: cyberbullying, design changes, Facebook, lawsuit, Long Island
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
The Dunbar no. & online social networks
Labels: Dunbar number, Facebook, friends lists, MySpace, social networking
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
*Social* classifieds: Safer
Labels: Facebook, MySpace, online classifieds, Oodle
Monday, March 02, 2009
Terms of use: Social Web bill of rights?
Labels: consumer privacy, Facebook, Terms of Service, terms of use
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Social networking growth in India
Labels: bharatstudent, Facebook, India, international social networking
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Facebook's about-face on terms of use
I said Facebook's smart in my lead up there because, in going back to its previous terms-of-use version, it's buying time for the process of folding user input into the new terms' development process and this giant experiment is also about user (and societal) education. It needs time. There are factors involved that only a few of the privacy bloggers are writing about (e.g., author Daniel Solove), including the tension between consumer privacy pressures and those from law enforcement to hand over as well as retain user data after users have closed their accounts. But time is short, too. Though this social and media experiment - and consensus-building in general - take time, Facebook doesn't have a whole lot, given the climate outside the Petrie dish. The predator panic recently brought into perspective by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force is a good illustration of how worst-case scenarios and fears tend to eclipse the public discussion about the social Web - to the detriment of child safety (see the New York Times and my post on that). Why to the detriment? Because kids usually want to get far away from scared, worked-up parents; they go "underground" online, where parents aren't in the mix. Never the best scenario. [Thanks to UK privacy researcher Tara Taubman for pointing out a few of the links below.]
Here are other reports and commentaries worth reading:
Labels: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, privacy, Terms of Service
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Facebook, terms of use & privacy
Labels: consumer privacy, Facebook, Facebook Connect, online privacy, Terms of Service
Virtual helicopter parenting
Labels: custom social networking, Facebook, parenting
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