MySpace Tries to Clean Up for the Kids

Karen Murphy — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:02:00 GMT

Oh, MySpace, home of the pornbots, the spambots, the obsessive commenters. Where people really do have 289,000 friends. Where a teenager's parents can help humilate another teen into suicide. And where kids lie about their ages to create a profile and post inappropriate photos of themselves for all to see.

Well, MySpace is trying to clean up its act to protect the underage, and is allying with the attorneys general of 49 states (I wonder which state was the lone holdout here?) to "fight sexual predators and clean up social networks". Think it'll work? Here's what they're doing:

Letting parent submit a list of their kids' email addresses to MySpace so that if the kid tries to create a profile there they are turned down. Except, uh, a kid can create a new email address in like 20 seconds. Brilliant, MySpace!

It will also set the profiles of all 16 and 17-year-olds to private, so only their established online friends can visit their pages - essentially creating a “closed” section for users under age 18. Except, uh, what kid doesn't have the ability to lie about his age and create a profile of someone slightly older? Even my incredibly naive 12-year-old knows this is what you do to set up a profile on some site that has problems with the, say, under-13 crowd. Besides, how many MySpace profiles have I seen of people that purport to be 99 or 100? Think they're really that old? I mean, does anybody think that, even MySpace?

MySpace is also planning to hire a contractor to identify and delete pornographic images on the site. Think they're having a bit of a bidding war on that contract? And who decides what is "pornographic"?

And MySpace will also "take charge of an Internet safety technical task force to develop age and identity verification tools for social networking sites." Huh? Is that newspeak? Uh, ok, so what would these tools be, exactly? Sounds good, doesn't it? But I don't see how you could possibly insist people be 100% honest about their age or identity on a social networking site. Good luck with that one.

Photo: parentdish.com

Strollerderby : attorney generals

MySpace Tries to Clean Up for the Kids