2 posts tagged “news corp”

Thanks to technology and the Internet, the world is becoming increasingly transparent and accessible.  Social media is playing an important role in this transformation.  So far, most people seem to be responding to the power of social media favorably, and they’re using the power of social media for good.  However, there is a risk that the pendulum could shift in the other direction over time.  Below are the "5 Deadly Sins" of social media - pitfalls that proponents of social media should watch out for and proactively advocate against:

• Market saturation: There is a proliferation of social networking sites available – lots of sites are competing for users time.  Marketers are creating new social networking sites in record numbers to promote their products, and the number of traditional social networking sites (MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Gather, WAYN, CyWorld, etc.) are also growing.  Users often use different for the same purpose but to meet different people.  If the market becomes overly fragmented, it may become less useful and more burdensome to user.  I hope that a natural market consolidation will happen eventually, but in the meantime, the industry runs the risk of users “burning out” from having to juggle too many different websites, on-line “friends”, different profile inputting tools, and passwords.
• Exploitation of social media at the expense of others: Social media makes it easier than ever to share information on-line.  While, the power of information sharing is good, it can also be dangerous in the wrong hands, enabling: fraud, misrepresentation of identity, identity theft, sexual exploitation, and unethical sharing of corporate or government secrets.  I just read an interesting article on the security risk that social media presents to corporations.  The same is true for governments and individuals.  The “Star Wars Kid”  and Paris Hilton were two of the first people to learn a thing or two about that.
• Eradication of privacy: This one is closely linked to the bullet point above on exploitation, but I felt it deserved its own section because it goes beyond exploitation because what is considered private to one person, isn’t necessarily considered private to another.  The Washingtonienne case is a good example of this.  Another example is that anyone can get an aerial photograph of your house at Google Maps or go to Zillow to find out what your house is worth.  Add location based social media services and mobile phones into the mix, and tracking people's location becomes easy via services like Helio's Buddy Beacon and Dodgeball.  While these are great services and they offer opt-in privacy, it's scary to think what could happen if either service were hacked.  Alternatively, imagine the damage that would result if someone's location information got into the wrong hands or was commandeered by a "friend" turned stalker. 
  
• Opportunistic litigation: Lawsuits like those filed earlier this week against News Corp. pose a strong threat to the health of social media.  If cases like these succeed, the rulings will send a dangerous message to the public: “You’re not responsible for your own safety or the safety of your children.  Someone else is.”  Unjustified lawsuits also stifle technical innovation and have the potential to strangle social media with excessive amounts of red tape.
• Opaque Marketing: Marketers are becoming more sophisticated about the ways that they use social media to their advantage.  It is already difficult to avoid pop-ups and other advertisements on-line.  And, with some social media sites, it difficult to tell what is advertising versus what is genuine, unbiased opinion.  Take, for example, bloggers who get paid by companies to evangelize products (I don’t, but a lot do).  Advertising on social media sites isn’t nearly as transparent as it should be, and social media runs the risk of being tarnished by overzealous marketers.

1/22/07 UPDATE: Thanks everyone for your insightful comments.  I just read a great article by Mark Zielinski, a UK-based security engineer.  The article talks about the threat that social media poses to corporate security.  In the article, Mark talks about how employees use their work computers to check their social networking pages and that this poses a threat to corporate networks.  Unsurprisingly, employees checking social media sites rather than doing work probably, has an impact on productivity - even more so than personal email. With these two points in mind, I'd like to add "Bringing Down the Corporation" as the 6th deadly sin of Social Media.

Today, the Associated Press reported, that four families filed separate lawsuits against News Corp (MySpace), claiming that their 14 and 15 year old daughters were sexually assaulted by pedophiles they met on-line.  The families, located in New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, are seeking millions of dollars damages, claiming that MySpace didn’t initiate strong enough security measures to protect their children from solicitation from adults. Jason A. Itkin, a lawyer with Arnold & Itkin, one of the law firms representing one of the suits said:

"In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users… Hopefully these lawsuits can spur MySpace into action and prevent this from happening to another child somewhere.”

These lawsuits aren’t the first of their kind.  In June 2005, a mother in Texas sued MySpace and News Corp for $30,000,000 in damages, claiming that her 14-year old daughter was sexually assaulted by a 19 year old man, who it is alleged, lied to the girl by claiming he was a senior in high school and luring her into a false sense of trust.

In response to the lawsuits filed today, Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, issued a statement saying:

MySpace serves as an industry leader on Internet safety and we take proactive measures to protect our members… We provide users with a range of tools to enable a safer online experience.

Nigam went on to discuss the responsibility of users and their parents to “engage in open family dialogue” about on-line safety, transferring valuable off-line lessons to on-line interactions.  The most recent step in the right direction came when MySpace announced that it would introduce parental notification.  (I'll be interested to see how that works.)

While it is a sad reality that creepy people (including sexual predators) exist and that pedophiles use social networking sites to target children, I agree with Nigam.  Social networking websites must take security seriously.  However, it is right to blame social networking sites for the criminal activity of their members.  Doing so devalues the importance of parental responsibility, stifles technical innovation within social media, and perpetuates what is already an overly litigious culture in America.  

Criminals are to blame for their own criminal behavior.  Parents have the responsibility to educate themselves and their children about the dangers that exist on-line and talk about how to avoid them.  The tough part is that because technology and “what’s cool to kids” changes quickly, it is difficult for the average parent to keep up to speed.  

Organizations like Perverted Justice are doing their part to seek out on-line predators.  I wonder whether the world would benefit from a new, multi-national public-private partnership, whose aim is to educate parents and kids about the dangers that exist on-line (how to avoid them, how to report suspicious or unlawful behavior, etc.).  Regionally, members of this partnership could focus on developing legislation that protects kids.  I’d like to believe that this idea could work, but I’m realistic enough to know that it would be an uphill battle, likely fraught with bureaucracy and red tape.  

Citizens of the world have identified a problem that is crying out for a strong, targeted, and evolving solution. While I don’t propose to know what the answer is, suing MySpace isn't it.

If you have ideas, post a commment. If you aren't a VOX user and want to tell me what you think, email me: socialmediablog@gmail.com.