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."

The Networking Never Ends....

I think I started this semester saying that the next big Internet app is the social networking sites like Facebook. I believe this because it challenges some of my earlier work and suggests it's time for new theorizing. (Sort of like how we've been arguing that the SIDE model best applies to synchronous chat in one-time groups)

Well, here is another networking site for people with serious illnesses in their family. Care Pages helps link people together with illnesses. Caring Bridges is another one I've used to keep up with friends who have family members who are dying.

The "facebook" type applications never end.

And as we talked about last week, Facebook's privacy features are changing. Here is an article that explains why old folks might find that more attractive than young folks do.

Anti-Social networking sites

Continuing in the vein of the gossip sites, there are these "anti-social" networking sites:

• EnemyBook--which allows you to manage your "enemies" on facebook.
• Hatebook.com--apparently, facebook for haters.
• Snubster.com--Another enemy application for facebook.

What do you think?

Online Gossip Sites

Yikes!!!

This is the evil cousin of facebook, a site in which people can anonymously gossip about their peers.

What do you think of it!?

New Ways to Goof Off at Work

As we've discussed, Facebook is becoming more common at work. And in many ways this is a good thing as people increase their social network ties.

However, Facebook isn't all "networking" as you well know. There are tons of applications on there and some of them are really catching on. Superpoke was the first one to get attention, and make the creators freaky rich. Now Scrabulous is getting a lot of attention---with 700,000 players a day!!! Personally, I love Scrabulous but have to limit myself to one move a day or it eats into work time. (OK, I *try* to limit myself).

The issues I see with Scrabulous is that we really don't know when technology is going to take off, we just can see when it has. We have a poor ability to predict the future. Second, who knew it would become such an active game/problem for employees! That's well beyond the educational group. Finally, how are traditional media supposed to deal with Facebook applications? Should the Hasbro shut down the site for copyright infringement? Or should they try to tap into the $25,000 A MONTH the game is bringing in. I, like one of the people in the story, actually bought a Scrabble game for my husband and me to play at home.

Your thoughts??

Online Networks for Work

With your familiarity with Facebook, social networking may be an excellent way for you to get your career going. Check out this article on the Observer and then, you may consider joining Linkedin (essentially, a form of Facebook for the working world).

Hotel California...or Facebook?

Earlier this week, the NY Times reported that it was very difficult to leave Facebook. To erase one's data from the site, you had to contact customer service and delete your profile information line by line.

On Tuesday, Facebook responded to the uproar and will now make it a lot easier to both check out and leave Facebook when you are done with using the service.

Your thoughts?

Impression Management in Facebook

Some of the researchers you're reading about (or going to read about!) have some new research on Facebook and impression management in a recent NY Times article.

What do you think about it?

Collecting Data from Facebook

This recent article in the NY Times discusses how academic researchers are studying behavior on Facebook.

What do you think of this article? Is it fair for people to be studied when they don't know it? How does this differ from the APA Ethics code for observing people in their day-to-day environments? How can we balance what we learn from the risks we take? (You may need to look up the APA ethics code to answer some of these questions!)

You may need to register for the NY Times the first time you read an article. I recommend that you do because 1) it's free and 2) we're going to be using them as a source quite a bit throughout the semester.