Hello Psych Class

Facebook to Prevent Bullying

Facebook, states set bullying, predator safeguards
By STEPHANIE REITZ (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated PressMay 08, 2008 1:36 PM EDT

HARTFORD, Conn. - Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.
The changes include banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users' ability to search online for subscribers under 18 and joining an existing task force seeking ways to better verify users' ages and identities.
"The agreement marks another watershed step toward social networking safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate content," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced the agreement Thursday with his counterparts in several other states.

Officials from Washington, D.C., and 49 states have signed on.
Facebook, which has more than 70 million active users worldwide, already has enacted many of the changes and others are in the works, its officials said Thursday.
"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer. "The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."
Texas has not endorsed this agreement or a similar one reached in January among the other states, the District of Columbia and MySpace. Texas officials have said they want faster action on verifying users' ages and identities.
The attorneys general have been negotiating for months for tighter controls with Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook and MySpace, the world's largest online social network with 200 million users around the world.
"Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a responsibility to keep those kids safe," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said. "We've now gotten the two largest social networking sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from predators and pornography."
MySpace, Facebook and other online networks have created a new venue for sexual predators, who often lie about their age to lure young victims to chat, share images and sometimes meet in person. It also has spawned cyberbullies, who have sent threatening and anonymous messages to classmates, acquaintances and other users.
Among other changes, Facebook has agreed to:

- Ensure companies offering services on its site comply with its safety and privacy guidelines.
- Keep tobacco and alcohol ads from users too young to purchase those products.
- Remove groups whose comments or images suggest they may involve incest, pedophilia, bullying or other inappropriate content.
- Send warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an adult.
- Review users' profiles when they ask to change their age, ensuring the update is legitimate and not intended to let adults masquerade as children.
The protections included in the MySpace and Facebook pacts could be expanded to smaller services such as Friendster and Bebo, Blumenthal said.
"We're entering a new era in social networking safety," Blumenthal said. "This agreement is open-ended in envisioning advances in technology that will permit even stronger steps in the future toward protecting kids' safety."

Online Bridesmaids?

I know classes are over, but I thought this was a pretty interesting article. The NY Times wrote an article about wedding-related community boards. I find it interesting though, because so these people meet over common bonds of wedding planning and progress (usually quickly) into ftf meetings and eventually become wedding guests.

I just read a post this morning about one woman having extra seats at her upcoming wedding, so she posted a public invite on the forum. Seems risky to me. In my opinion, that bond must be pretty strong to invite them to something as personal as a wedding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/fashion/weddings/04FIELD.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=cyber+bridesmaid&st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Somewhat Relevant....

haha oops

I forgot to add the link...and I cant figure out how to edit my post. Sorry!! here is the link.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24161656/

Verrrry Interesting!!

So I was bored (at work) and "cyber loafing" when I came across a very interesting article in regards to MySpace and how it can bring shy people out of their shells to meet new people on-line and raise their self esteem off-line! I thought the article was quite interesting...seeming how MySpace usually gets a pretty bad rap.

what do you think?

Update on my car

So today was an interesting day I would have to say! Yes it was my car that got broken into this morning! Who would have thought?? Thats just my luck...I only come to school on Tues and Thurs and three days before my last day, something goes wrong. I guess I can be greatful that I was not in the car and did not get harmed! Although my passenger side window did get busted in and they tooke my stereo (which was also a DVD touch screen). They did not get my speakers in the back or the amp that goes along with those....thanks to a friendly school goer. Its almost hard to believe when you get taken out of class for something like this....but it is very real when you get up to where you parked your car only an hour before. After dealing with the police I took my car to a dealership so it could be kept safe from the rain and hopefully from other intruders. I was able to get myself a rental. I hope everyone else's presentations went well today...and sorry for the interruption during our class time.

Turkers

As we all know, computers can be depended on for most tasks, but certain things - decision making, facial recognition, all these higher level cognitive tasks - humans are always better at. This is a problem that software developers and researchers in artificial intelligence face.

Well, Amazon has came out with artificial artificial intelligence. They have a service called Mechanical Turk, which I just heard about a few days ago. It is the weirdest thing.

Basically, people pay for "Turkers" to do tasks. They include things like identifying if a picture has text or not text and describing the picture in simple words. Another example would be picking out pictures in a group that do not belong. Other people pay people to read their blog and post on a topic.

It sounds cool so far, but people are only making $.01 to $.10 for each task. I read an article that called it a "virtual sweatshop."

Here is a recent article

Right now, researchers are looking at how valid some of the Turkers' work is and how to increase quality, etc. I know that some HCI people are really interested in using Mechanical Turk for research participants.

And what I want to know is... what keeps people on Turk? These people aren't making much money! Much less than minimum wage.

Completely New Health VC

This story, of patients sharing very personal information, amazes me. It is a completely different health virtual community than what we've talked about before. I'd even argue that it is a combination of the objective "scientific" medical web sites and a supportive one. Truly, we cannot anticipate the ways the internet is going to change the way we interact with each other. I had to get (too) extreme, but I think the internet is going to change the way established groups in society fundamentally interact.

New Uses of the Internet

The first story is inevitable; people are going to blog about their divorces and the non-blogging partner is going to be upset.

The second one is more frightening and is part of what (I believe) the police were afraid of with the stolen car story: internet vigilantes, particularly when "we" might not believe the vigilantes have the right story/perspective/person.

What do you think of both of these stories?

The Kindness of Online Strangers

To counteract that troll story from last week, I found this story in which friends and strangers help find a stolen car. Nice change from causing people physical harm.

See you all Tuesday!

Top 5 Sexiest Video Game Characters

While browsing the internet I found where MSNBC has named the "Top 5 Sexiest Video Game Characters". Very interesting. I never realized video game characters could be 'sexy', nor did I realize how realistic some look. There's even an article titled, "Video games' hottest couples". It's almost as if its another 'real' world.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23990546&GT1=40006?pg=1#games_top5_080406_SexiestCharacters

Virtual Communities

Continuing its habit of publishing articles related to this week's topic, the NY Times Magazine had a special article on virtual communities, in this case, for friends and family of prisoners. One of the arugments I found interesting in this article is that niche communities thrive where general ones do not. (One must admit that this is a pretty niche group!) At the end of the article, you can also see an animal role playing community; it's not my cat group, but it sure sounds interesting!! :-)

What do you think of this, particularly the potential for the prisoner virtual community members to become exploited? Do you think this is one of the reasons that while facebook is so popular, it's not necessarily a community because it is so broadly appealing?

Walther (SIP/ Virtual Team)

I enjoyed this article. As Erin said, some parts were a little bit repetitive...however, I am glad we discussed more on SIP and attribution error. I think SIP is really important to note because the end result is the same as face to face. Some people may think online interactions don't work as well as face to face...but they just develop more slowly. I also think it is important to note the SIP rules we went over. I think those are all very important rules to use, but there are many more ways to go about communication online. If a virtual team were to be built, those rules would be very helpful in beginning a solid online communication team. I believe in the years to come virtual teams will become more and more common. This will be leading to more interactions and trust being built online.

Walther Article

This article discusses the differences between virtual groups communication and ftf in regards to trust, liking and performance. In cmc, trust and liking of members are established when the members communicate frequently and perform the assigned tasks of the group. The more one participate and contribute to the group, the more the group will trust and like the contributor. This has proven to be true when participating in a class assignment. People will be drawn more to the person who stays focus and complete her/his share of the work. In ftf, trust and liking are more the result of how a person is perceived socially.