The “hate raids” on Twitch spotlight an important online safety reality: It’s increasingly a cross-platform effort. Hate raids, or hate spam, is harassment on steroids and, as the Washington Post points out, it’s a form of online harm that has been around for years but “became a larger Twitch concern [last] month after a streamer … posted a video of themselves getting raided.” Because … [Read more...] about Countering ‘hate raids’ needs to be coordinated too
Safety Mode
Safety tools for summer video viewing & search
Do the YouTube and Google search fans at your house know about SafeSearch and Safety Mode? Google made these safety tools available starting a few years ago (see my 2009 post about the former here), but software engineer Matthias Heiler just posted a heads-up about them for users who might be a little more active online during summer vacation. Even before summer was in full swing, 182 million … [Read more...] about Safety tools for summer video viewing & search
Google’s new Family Safety Center
The search giant and parent of YouTube, Picasa, Buzz, etc. today launched its new "one-stop shop" for online and on-phone safety for parents. The two things I like about the Family Safety Center most are 1) the video that pulls together good ideas about kid safety from parents at Google, including CEO Eric Schmidt (on the Safety Center's main page) and the way the FAQ puts safety info for all key … [Read more...] about Google’s new Family Safety Center
What do you think of YouTube’s safety tools?
Hey, parents, if you use and like YouTube's safety features (Safety Mode, the profanity filter for comments, and its video-rich Help section), you might post your comments below their blog post about "Celebrating Internet Safety Month." It would be interesting to get parents' views. Judging by the comments under their post, most people who have something to say about YouTube's safety features are … [Read more...] about What do you think of YouTube’s safety tools?
YouTube’s new tool for kid-safe viewing
More than 33 billion online videos were watched during December and about a third of the them were on YouTube, according to comScore's latest figures. A 2008 study by Nielsen found that YouTube was 2-to-11-year-olds' No. 1 video viewing site (see this). So parents will probably be happy to know that YouTube now has its own filter for sexually explicit or violent content. "While no filter is 100% … [Read more...] about YouTube’s new tool for kid-safe viewing