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April 14, 2006

Dear Subscribers:

Next week NetFamilyNews will be on spring break, but I'll be blogging as daily as possible, so you can keep up with major kid-tech news in my blog. Here's our lineup for this second week of April:


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MySpace teen-safety tour

MySpace is giving more and more tours of its 4th floor these days. That's where the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company deals with the issues so much in the news of late: teens' social-networking, blogging, cyberbullying, and ID theft. We (BlogSafety.com co-founder Larry Magid and I) recently got the tour, and - despite all the typically grayish-taupe work cubicles not unlike insurance guy Bob Incredible's of Pixar-movie fame - it's pretty impressive. We thought you'd like a snapshot of what's going on there behind the headlines.

First, parents might keep in mind that, though MySpace is the 600-pound gorilla of social-networking sites and leading all the news coverage, it is just one of them. There are many services where online kids can upload personal information or risqué photos and videos. The FBI says there are some 200. That list (which the FBI is not sharing with news folk) could easily include media-hosting sites like YouTube.com, to which people are uploading some 35,000 videos daily (the line between social-networking and media-hosting sites is rapidly blurring - it's all just user-driven Web 2.0 stuff). If you'd like a list, here's Wikipedia.org's, linking to nearly 5 dozen, but the point is, no matter how well MySpace is keeping up with its 68 million+ members, any one of them can simply move on once his/her profile is on Mom or Dad's radar screen, and many teens have accounts at two or three such sites (see my 1/13/06 issue).

Photos. Anyway, the 4th floor Customer Care and member-security tour includes a lot of numbers - even some that don't appear in news reports. For example, at peak usage, we were told, the site has 1.7 million to 2 million users on it, and some 20 million on any given day; the Customer Care people (of which there are now 105, with more being hired) look at some 600,000 profiles/day, checking for users under 14 (the site's minimum age); and they look at between 75,000 and 125,000 photos a day, checking for violations of the site's Terms of Use (porn, hate, violence, etc.). Every photo uploaded to the site is reviewed, we heard - first by software, then by 30+ staff people who just review photos. Photos flagged by software and the first tier of human reviewers are then viewed in the context of profiles and galleries, with violating ones deleted usually within 24 hours ("we've been tightening that up," a MySpace spokesperson said, adding that only a tiny percentage of photos that arrive in the site are inappropriate).

Links outward. One thing teen social-networkers know that a lot of parents don't is that there's a way around these social-networking sites' media rules: linking to other sites. In other words, if MySpace deletes a photo or video, people can just upload it to another site like PhotoBucket.com, ImageShack.com, or YouTube.com and link to it from their MySpace pages - so some sexually explicit photos that appear to be on MySpace are in other sites the user's linking to. MySpace says it's negotiating with such sites to delete porn, but we think this could be a losing battle, because many are small startups with limited staff for monitoring, and the sites are multiplying like rabbits. Videos, by the way, get different treatment. They don't go live on the site until they're reviewed and approved by MySpace staff as complying with the Terms of Service.

'School boards.' Another stop on our tour was Jason's cubicle, where he spends his workdays communicating with the some 30,000 high school students appointed by peers in their schools (they view this as quite an honor) to be in MySpace's volunteer school moderators program. These students moderate their schools' own discussion boards at MySpace.com, presumably keeping those discussions lively and in compliance with the site's rules. When anybody's (students', teachers', administrators', etc.) names or identities get abused, or if harassment or cyberbullying comes up on boards or in profiles or blogs, those issues get turned over to Customer Care. The latter also works with law-enforcement agencies around the US, from local police departments to states' Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces to the FBI and National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

13 & under. As for people 13 and under who say they're older when they register at MySpace, this area has gotten a lot of news coverage. Basically, with its user numbers (some 13 million of them teens) growing by some 250,000 users a day and as part of a publicly traded corporation, MySpace looks to be leading the charge in this area. The breaking news this week bears this out (see links below). Last week hundreds of news stories reported the statement by News Corp.'s Internet Division president Ross Levinsohn at a New York conference that MySpace had so far deleted more than 200,000 profiles, mostly of underage users. MySpace says two mechanisms cause it to review and possibly delete underage profiles: 1) reports from other members and parents, and 2) its proprietary search technology that continuously scans the site for "over 1,000 search terms [indicating someone's under 14] constantly updated to reflect changes in user behavior and speech." [There are instructions for underage MySpacers' parents who wish to remove their children's profiles here.]

Youngest members. When 14- and 15-year-olds register, their profiles are automatically set to "private," we were told. They're not accessible to the site's search engine, and only people they designate as "Friends" can view their profiles, send IM or email messages to them, or add them to a blog list. They can opt out of parts of that, but "their profile may still only be viewed by 'Friends' and users with a stated age of under 18."

Of course, given MySpace's growth rate and the user-driven nature of social-networking, all the above don't add up to total teen safety. That might be impossible for social-networking sites adding even tens of thousand of users a day. We haven't had tours of other such sites, but we've read a lot of FAQs and Terms of Use and can say two things confidently: 1) everybody - social-networking companies, media-hosting sites, children's advocates, law enforcement people, teens, and parents - is figuring the teen-safety issue out as we go, under very new conditions (kid-published content on a multiplatform, multimedia Web); and 2) its popularity has thrust MySpace out in front, for good and bad reasons, so it has had to scramble, is making an honest effort, and has become the standard to beat - as it struggles to keep its balance between free expression and child safety. Web 2.0 has moved the struggle beyond high-level courts and into homes, schools, Customer Care Departments - wherever online kids have an impact.

MySpace breaking news

I always welcome your views and stories - either via anne@netfamilynews.org or in the NetFamilyForum.

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Web News Briefs
  1. Teens charged in child-porn case

    Three Rhode Island girls, two 16 and one 19, recently were arrested and charged with conspiracy. One of the 16-year-olds allegedly took sexually explicit photos of the other two girls, the Associated Press reported, who were arrested earlier for posting the photos on their MySpace pages. The photos were discovered by a police officer "assigned to Lincoln High School who regularly monitors the site," the AP added. I asked an attorney at the National Center for Missing & Reported Children if she believes it's increasingly possible that minors will be up against adult-level prosecution in cases where they "distribute" child pornography like this. Mary Leary, deputy director of the Center's Office of Legal Counsel, replied that kids do "face the 'possibility' of charges much more so now than in the past. However, particularly when the images are of the youth him/herself, the appropriate response from prosecutors is unclear and very jurisdiction-specific. In situations such as that referenced in the AP report, this will be a fact-specific review to see the purpose for the posting, circumstances of the posting, and applicable law." Parents and kids will want to note what Ms. Leary says here: "In many jurisdictions youths will be charged with such offenses, notwithstanding a lack of understanding they were dealing in child pornography." She adds that "there are additional repercussions as well for such actions, even if the product of bad judgment ... [including] charges unrelated to child porn, such as harassment, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy charges. Civil liability should also be a concern."

  2. Get the April patches

    Microsoft has released three new patches for Windows PCs, all critical, the Associated Press reports. One fixes an Internet Explorer browser flaw that has already been exploited, so - if you Windows PC owners don't have patching automated (e.g., at Windows OneCare), get that patch right away! Here's Washington Post PC security writer Brian Krebs with "The Skinny on April's Batch of Microsoft Patches."

  3. Virtual pedophilia in Net 'world'

    It's not against the law because real children aren't involved, CNET cites legal experts as saying, but some players in the Second Life virtual world are speaking out about "age play." "This age-based role-playing can take on various forms," according to CNET: "It can be as innocuous as people acting out a family dynamic, or as potentially troubling as two adults engaging in sexual role playing, with one of the avatars made to look like a child." Second Life avatars can be animals, elves, monsters - just about anything the imagination can dream up. The adults-only game has 170,000 players and is growing by about 20% a month (there's also a Second Life for Teens - see my 8/12/05 issue). The game's management, which acknowledges "age play" is occurring, says it's reluctant to ban any role-playing activity that isn't illegal because role-playing is so integral to an alternate world, but "if a critical mass of 'Second Life' participants were to ask that something additional be done about sexual age-play, [its creators] Linden Lab would tackle the issue in some way. So far, there hasn't been a general outcry," CNET reports. This is an example of how the gray area between legal and illegal activity seems to be widening as the Web becomes increasingly user-driven and peer-to-peer, other examples being the use of music in home-made videos (see PC World) and "self-published child porn" (see my 1/20/06 and 8/27/04 and issues).

  4. Child porn law not global

    Since the advent of the Web and the consequent growth in child-porn trafficking, we've usually heard that child pornography is illegal in most countries. Now we know it isn't, thanks to a new study by the International Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "ICMEC's global policy review of child pornography laws in 184 Interpol-member countries showed that more than half [138] have no laws that specifically address child pornography, and in many others the existing laws are insufficient," Information Week reports. The ICMEC's press release added: "Surprisingly, just five of the countries reviewed have laws considered comprehensive enough to make a significant impact on the crime: Australia, Belgium, France, South Africa, and the United States." The number of calls last year to the US's National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's CyberTipline.com (800.843.5678) was 340,000, up from "more than 24,400 in 2001."

  5. Teen self-expression: Online, in a book

    Teen online journals and social-networking sites aren't the only "place" to find out what kids are thinking about. There's also The Notebook Girls, by Julia, Sophie, Courtney, and Lindsey, who "passed a notebook around to each other during classes [at Stuyvesant High School in New York City]. In that notebook, they would share comments on all sorts of things - "boys and basketball, drugs and dating, politics and promiscuity," according to the Los Angeles Times's review - their whole other life that "parents don't even know about," as one of the authors put it, so it's not for the faint of parental heart. That one, collective journal of four freshmen's school life, with both "personal and political [post-9/11 lower Manhattan] anxieties," became five bulging, handwritten notebooks that publisher Warner Books compressed back into one. The sub-plot of the L.A. Times's great review is about teen writers, who are beginning to compete, perhaps rightfully, with adult authors in the "Young Adult (YA)" category. "This generation of teenagers seems less fazed by the challenges of writing a book and getting it published.... Teenagers, after all, are forever sending text and instant messages. They spend hours updating blogs and keeping online journals. The discipline that adult wannabes fight so hard to master in night classes and writing colonies -- the need to write, write and write some more -- comes effortlessly to many teens. For them, daily life on the Internet has become an almost natural prelude to the writing of short stories, essays and novels." A definite upside to teen online activity, I'd say.

  6. 1 smart mom's process

    She sounds like a great parent, and her process in navigating online social-networking issues with her 13-year-old will sound familiar (and be useful) to a lot of parents. But don't stop reading Los Angeles Times reporter Catherine Saillant's account after the first page. An idea from her sister is what really got the smart-parenting wheels turning: "My-49-year-old sister, Christine, joined MySpace and told me she was having fun using it. She urged me to set up my own account so we would have a free, easy way to exchange emails and photographs. I thought ... what if I allowed Taylor [her daughter] to maintain a page while keeping a close eye o nit? I'd join too, to become familiar with the site's benefits and drawbacks?" Check out the article to see what happened (hint: you will not be surprised to find it wasn't all smooth sailing, but there was some priceless collaborative learning.) For further tech-parenting input, including coordinating with the parents of our kids' friends, see advice from psychologist Ron Clavier, author of Teen Brain, Teen Mind, in the Toronto Star. [For another smart parent's process, see "A dad on kids' blogs."]

  7. Free ABC TV on Web

    The Wall Street Journal is calling it "a watershed." As TV ad revenues continue to slide, YouTube.com takes off, and the Web is nudging out TV in teen time spent on entertainment, Disney's move could speed up changes in TV consumption even more, the Journal says. "On April 30, ABC will unveil a revamped Web site that will include a 'theater' where people with broadband connections can watch free episodes of ... hit shows on their computers ... the morning after they air," at which time they'll be archived in ABC's site for anyone to view anytime. "A Disney Channel version with five shows will start in June, and an ABC Family version is also planned." The move probably won't affect ABC's deal with Apple's iTunes because Apple, because ABC's site won't allow users to download the programs to portables like the video iPod. For more on the YouTube phenom (35 million videos viewed daily, 35,000 new videos uploaded daily), see the Associated Press (and "YouTube: The next MySpace," 4/7).

  8. Filters, laws, parenting?

    It never hurts to have another tool in tech-parenting toolboxes, and good sense, software, and laws are among them. The Journal News in Westchester County, N.Y., suggests that parents are increasingly using filtering software as a stopgap for younger Web surfers when they can't be looking over surfers' shoulders. "The increasing reliance on technology comes in the absence of enforceable laws that regulate pornography on the Web," the Journal News reports, though "the lack of laws is not for lack of trying." There have been many legislative efforts, but the First Amendment keeps bringing online child protection back into parents' hands, which is probably best because that's the only place where solutions can be tailor-made for each child. The Journal News mentions the latest legislative effort, Cyber Safety for Kids Act of 2006, a proposed law from Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AK) and Max Baucus (D-MT), "that would create a new [.xxx] domain for adult Web sites" with "the idea that filtering software could then easily identify which sites to weed out." It, too, will probably face big hurdles because a body outside the US government, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), is what creates Web domains, the .xxx idea has been stalled there for years, and meanwhile US courts (including the Supreme one) are still trying to figure out what to do with the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (stay tuned for the next set of arguments in the federal court in Philly in the fall).

  9. Social-networking in Brazil

    Here's a point of interest, internationally speaking: It doesn't matter if a US-based social-networking site didn't really take off in the US. San Francisco-based Bebo.com is the hot social-networking site in the UK and Mountain View, Calif.-based Orkut.com is the hot social-networking site in Brazil. "Orkut, the invention of a Turkish-born software engineer [at Google] named Orkut Buyukkokten, never really caught on in the United States, where MySpace rules teenage cyberspace. But it is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon in Brazil," the New York Times reports, adding that 11 million of the site's 15 million users are social-networking in Portuguese (well, they're in Brazil, anyway, where the site's name is pronounced "or-KOO-chee"). Of course, humanity being the way it is, there's a backlash: "Almost as soon as Brazilians started taking over Orkut in 2004 -- and long before April 2005, when Google made Orkut available in Portuguese -- English-speaking users formed virulently anti-Brazilian communities like 'Too Many Brazilians on Orkut'." What one social-networker doesn't like, undoubtedly others are finding very cool. Penpals, Web 2.0-style! Meanwhile, The Sunday Times of London reports that Bebo's some 22 million users now include some 500,000 in Ireland, and SiliconRepublic.com reports that Bebo's will be among the "senior executives from global internet giants Google, eBay, [and] Yahoo" who will "descend on" Dublin next month to "discuss the impact and future of the internet at an Internet industry conference." (See also "Bebo craze in UK.")

  10. Researchers, kids on violent games

    Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Pittsburgh have released a study showing "what they consider proof positive" that violent videogames have a negative affect on players, TechNewsWorld.com reports. The study, which looked at the effects of media violence exposure on men 18-21, found that the games "negatively affect a players' blood pressure and lead to uncooperative behavior, permissive attitudes toward violence, alcohol and marijuana use, sexual activity without condom use and hostile social information processing." [See "MI videogame law killed" for more on the linkage between research and laws.] Meanwhile, "Video Game Violence," a 7-minute documentary by three Florida 9th-graders, won 3rd prize in C-SPAN's nationwide contest "StudentCam," the Palm Beach Post reports. "The documentary includes original music created by a garage band and interviews with parents and students at the school." All the winners, which will be shown on C-SPAN, can be found at StudentCam.org.

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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News


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