HI Folks,

On Monday, I had a personal visit to MySpace headquarters. They invited me
for a meeting to seek my guidance on responding to Internet safety and
responsible use issues. I want to report to you on what I saw and what I
think. I think the members of these three discussion groups know that I am
quite apt to speak my mind. ;-)

I will tell you I was impressed by the efforts MySpace is taking to address
the recognized Internet safety and responsible use concerns and believe in
their sincerity.

Here is what I witnessed and was told:

When abuse complaints come in, they are sent to a special team of responders
who have had specific training in addressing abuse issues. There is also
some specialization within this team.

They have specific procedures to promptly respond to legal subpoenas. They
showed me the chart of the numbers of subpoenas and it is increasing
exponentially each month. Incredible chart.

They have one staff member, a young man, who is assigned to work with school
discussion groups and school concerns. They have public groups associated
with schools on their system. There are currently 25,000 +- They seek a
student from the school to serve as a moderator and try to pick a student
who appears to them to be a "school leader" based on an application. The
moderator's job is to contact MySpace if any issues of concern arise. I
think it will be very helpful for schools to find out whether there is a
public group for the school and who the moderator is. It is likely that the
public group will attract the school's "in-crowd" and that other groups of
kids within the school may set up their own public or private groups. (This
would be fascinating sociological research.) A staff person who has a good
relationship with the student moderator could contact this student and
simply offer any assistance, should the need arise. This needs to be done
respectfully -- in support of this student's leadership potential. Reviewing
the comments in this discussion group will provide insight into the school
community from the eyes of some of the students.

This MySpace staff person also works with administrators and school resource
officers if they contact MySpace about a school concern. I have spoken with
a couple of school resource officers who have had dealings with MySpace and
they told me they were very pleased with the quality of the response and
service. This young man appeared to be very sincere and competent -- but
also very young and without any actual school experience.

He and his supervisor reflected some concerns with the manner in which
school officials were contacting them. One major concern -- which I am going
to take some significant actions to address -- is that sometimes
administrators contact the company for assistance but the administrator
cannot tell them the specific location of the concerning material. Why?
BECAUSE THE ADMINISTRATOR IS BLOCKED FROM ACCESSING THE SITE! This is
outrageous folks and will have to be promptly addressed. A parent calls the
school and reports "My child is being threatened." I saw some material that
makes me concerned about possible suicide." or the like and the
administrator, counselor, or school resource officer can't go to the site to
make an assessment. This is unacceptable. I am going to try to work through
the US Dept of Ed and other channels to alert schools to get this situation
changed. These three staff positions in each school must have override
rights and capabilities. This is essential. (And I am embarrassed that I did
not detect this as a concern earlier.)

MySpace has a text monitoring system that they use to detect possible
concerns, including under age members, gang text or symbols, threats, and
the like. They remove 1800 to 2000 under age profiles per day that they have
identified. They also review all of the images posted on the site soon after
they are posted. This is a monumental task -- not a job I would want. The
images are on a screen that the reviewer can control. That has the facility
for the reviewer to indicate that the image or the profile of the person
posting the image should be deleted. They review videos prior to posting --
taking miscellaneous screen shots from the video. This level of review is
not going to take down provocative pictures (eg Britanny Spears-like press
photos).

They have new instructions on their site that provide guidance for parents
seeking to remove the profile of their child.
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/misc/RemovingChildProfiles.html. This
situation presents some difficulties. If they responded to every request
that appears to come from a parent to remove a profile, someone could
impersonate a parent for the purpose of bullying. Or they could get into the
middle of a custodial parent dispute. My assessment is that the way they are
proceeding is the only possible way to address the concern.

The MySpace folks are very interested in the fact that I am working on a
book for parents, because they really want to see more parents engaged in
appropriate parenting. I think MySpace is really doing a lot to address the
safety and responsible use concerns. But parents should not expect MySpace
or any other web site to do their job for them!!! These sites are not
babysitting operations.

MySpace staff appear to have a good understanding of the concerns and are
reaching out to me and others to seek even better ways to address the
concerns. The see increased education of parents and youth as the answer.
The challenge will be to get parents and youth to pay attention.

There are some significant social issues involved with these kinds of online
activities that will absolutely require education and parental involvement.
Actually, they will also require massive social change to really work, but I
am not holding my breath. <sigh> Teens are clearly using places like MySpace
to establish social status. How do young males establish social status? By
posting manly, daring images and information that demonstrate independence
and bravery and by being listed as a friend on as many profiles of "hot
girls" as possible. And how do girls establish social status? By posting
sexually provocative pictures and titillating information that attracts the
attention and friendship links of manly guys. How does any teen attract
attention? By posting hot, intimate information. The teens who are into
playing these games are the ones who are most likely playing these games on
places like MySpace. These are the same kinds of games that are going on
every day in the hallways of middle and high schools. Some of the students
are really into playing these games and others are not.

My hope is that we can find better ways to use these environments for more
socially beneficial uses. How about getting online teens focused on tasks
that would seek to alleviate problems associated with poverty in third world
villages?

I am going to be working on a brief document for schools that addresses some
of the things I think they should be doing in relation to these communities
-- starting first with override privileges.

Nancy


--
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
nwillard@...