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Should social networking sites take a more active role in monitoring new users??
amateurhour
One day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
One day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,314620,00.html
Missouri prosecutors will not file criminal charges in connection with the suicide of a teen who had been dumped by a fictitious boy on MySpace, officials announced Monday.
You can read the story, but the basic idea is that a mother wanted to know what a classmate was saying about her daughter, so she created a ficticious myspace account and an imaginary boy named Josh to befriend the classmate and get information. After the necessary information was received, the mother, her daughter, and a friend, used the account to write derogatory things about the classmate, and basically harrass her on a daily basis. The classmate responded with some vulgarity of her own, was scolded by her parents, and proceeded to walk upstairs to her room and kill herself. She was 13 years old.
There are a few points to this issue.
The mother, daughter, and friend of their family were not charged with harrassment, due to current laws, but the laws of the town were changed following this case to include online harrassment as a crime.
The girl who committed suicide was younger than the required age to start a myspace account.
I guess the debate here is who is to blame. The classmate, for starting the rumors in the first place? The parents, for not watching what their child does online. The harrassing family? The school? Myspace, and facebook? Or is it everyone equally?
Where do we draw the line of blame? Should myspace and facebook be more dedicated to weeding out underage users, or should they have access to school records to verify enrollment so false accounts cannot be made?
Under the new online harrasment law, should the parent be held responsible for the child's actions online, since the child is a minor?
Should kids just not be allowed to get on facebook and myspace altogether?
This is my first real D&D post, so if it needs to be cleaned up or if more information from the link needs to be in the post just let me know.
As for my side, I'm against myspace and facebook entirely. I have a myspace account, for business purposes (i'm working on a .com startup and wanted a sort of "about the author" page) which I've hardly touched. I was never a big fan of those sites even when I was in college, and I've got a problem with high school and middle school kids being as addicted to them as they are. That's just me though. Having said that, I really don't think myspace and/or facebook would be the ones to blame in this situation, other than not checking the facts of new members more closely.
Missouri prosecutors will not file criminal charges in connection with the suicide of a teen who had been dumped by a fictitious boy on MySpace, officials announced Monday.
You can read the story, but the basic idea is that a mother wanted to know what a classmate was saying about her daughter, so she created a ficticious myspace account and an imaginary boy named Josh to befriend the classmate and get information. After the necessary information was received, the mother, her daughter, and a friend, used the account to write derogatory things about the classmate, and basically harrass her on a daily basis. The classmate responded with some vulgarity of her own, was scolded by her parents, and proceeded to walk upstairs to her room and kill herself. She was 13 years old.
There are a few points to this issue.
The mother, daughter, and friend of their family were not charged with harrassment, due to current laws, but the laws of the town were changed following this case to include online harrassment as a crime.
The girl who committed suicide was younger than the required age to start a myspace account.
I guess the debate here is who is to blame. The classmate, for starting the rumors in the first place? The parents, for not watching what their child does online. The harrassing family? The school? Myspace, and facebook? Or is it everyone equally?
Where do we draw the line of blame? Should myspace and facebook be more dedicated to weeding out underage users, or should they have access to school records to verify enrollment so false accounts cannot be made?
Under the new online harrasment law, should the parent be held responsible for the child's actions online, since the child is a minor?
Should kids just not be allowed to get on facebook and myspace altogether?
This is my first real D&D post, so if it needs to be cleaned up or if more information from the link needs to be in the post just let me know.
As for my side, I'm against myspace and facebook entirely. I have a myspace account, for business purposes (i'm working on a .com startup and wanted a sort of "about the author" page) which I've hardly touched. I was never a big fan of those sites even when I was in college, and I've got a problem with high school and middle school kids being as addicted to them as they are. That's just me though. Having said that, I really don't think myspace and/or facebook would be the ones to blame in this situation, other than not checking the facts of new members more closely.
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I don't hold them responsible in the slightest. I was just saying should they be given more access to data to have a better chance at stopping false accounts from being created, especially when minors are involved?
well, what's sad about it is that the law didn't include what they did as a crime, and it's been changed now, or at least it's in the process of being changed, but these people basically get to walk.
They have access to all the data on their sites. Are you saying they should be given access to personal information that isn't provided to them and expected to act upon it to keep certain types of people out of their service? If so, why should this only apply to social-networking sites and not all public forums? The things that happened there could just as easily happen on this very forum instead of Facebook.
What? No.
It was petty and stupid for a grown person to be mocking a young teen, but that doesn't mean they should go to prison forever. Culpability in a crime or civil suit has to be premised on what is the reasonable expected outcome of an action. If I go to Taco Bell for lunch and order a burrito and that somehow directly results in someone's death, I'm not legally (or morally) responsible, because death is not a reasonably expected outcome of ordering a burrito. If I'm driving down the street blindfolded in front of a school and run over a kid, then I'm responsible, because that outcome was reasonably expected.
I think charging the parent with harassment when the laws on the books allow for it is reasonable. But the kid was clearly mentally unbalanced if some imaginary MySpace boy was worth killing herself over, but unless you can show that the parent knew the kid was unbalanced and likely to kill herself as a result of such heart-crushing distress, then there isn't, and shouldn't be, any legal recourse. Though the parent should feel very bad about himself.
Are you basing that claim on anything other than observing that a lot of people use Facebook and Myspace? And how do you propose we go about enabling them to verify the age of users? And why would it only apply to Facebook and Myspace? Is there any reason to believe that a significant portion of Facebook and Myspace users do all their socializing via Facebook and Myspace rather than using MySpace and Facebook as means to keep up on actual social-gatherings like parties and pub-crawls planned in advance? Is it terribly uncommon to use it mostly as a really elaborate voicemail box?
For facebook it's easy since you have to have .edu e-mail and I don't think Highschools give out e-mails, only colleges.
You're right. I guess what pisses me off here is that there is no resolution. There was a problem, and yes, for the most part it was just an unstable girl who killed herself, but there is no denying that she had outside influence in the issue, and I just feel like someone should have to take the blame for that besides her, and no one has. I just hate it when something tragic happens and no one can claim responsibility for it. It's like, "Hey, we're the most popular website on the planet, but we did the bare minimum here, so don't blame us.." and, "Hey, we're the parents, but we can't watch her all day, so don't blame us..." and finally, "hey, I admittedly commited fraud and harrasment, but the law doesn't say "internet", so don't blame me..." and that bothers the shit out of me.
Facebook now lets anyone join on the college side, and they've opened up a separate facebook just for high school and middle school.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. People need to stop seeing the Internet as the Digital West and instead see it as just another place where we can conduct business. There is no need for harassment and reckless manslaughter laws to have to cover cyberspace explicitly - they should be considered to do so innately. Of course, doing this would piss off the digerati, who believe that "it's all different because it's the Internet."
I'm more concerned with what kind of background led to the girl's instability in the first place. If someone is responsible for creating that environment, they are who I would hold accountable. Because I don't see how it makes any sense to require everyone to assume everyone they interact with is suicidal. I mean if some girl I've never met hits on me and I turn her down in a dismissive way and she goes and kills herself how does it make any sense to blame me or the bar in which we met?
That doesn't really respond to my question. We could employ a volunteer actor from a pool of hypothetical friends from a different school district for "Josh" and the same thing can be done. Why should we expect people to respond suicidally to interactions on Facebook more than to interactions in real-life?
And why does the person or people who created the environment that resulted in her state of psychological/emotional imbalance continue to get off the hook when the person or persons who harassed her are being handed responsibility for the suicide?
Honestly I don't think you've really thought this through, it seems like you just have an axe to grind against social-networking sites.
If you're looking to hold someone legally responsible, I don't think that's a road we really want to go down, for reasons VC brings up.
They stopped doing that like a year and a half ago, which incidentally was just before I closed my account.
Gee, teenagers lying about their ages? Never saw that coming. It's up to parents to dictate their children's online usage. This isn't MySpace's fault at all. I don't have an account but I recall seeing people who have their ages set to 99 when they clearly aren't that age. The problem is, there is no good process to verify the age. Requiring a credit card alienates many users through people not having one and people fearing giving out their number online. The process for a state ID changes from state to state, so without a national ID for all persons regardless of age (which has been shot down repeatedly) you aren't going to be able to completely verify the age of users. I got off on a tangent there but MySpace is certainly not the place to blame here.
It was beyond a dick move by the classmate, but this is the sort of thing that happens at that age. Kids tear other kids down because they're insecure themselves. The mother of the harrassing classmate was aware of the page but I doubt she was aware of the deception being delivered here. If she was, shame on her. She should be doing a better job of parenting and watching what her child does online. The school (what the fuck?), MySpace/Facebook aren't to blame here. If we want to coddle our children, they should be taught by one teacher organized into individual cubicles for one-on-one interaction. They should not be allowed to view another child. See how absurd this is?
How do you weed out users lying about their age? The reasons above should be sufficient to show that this isn't really possible. The majority of schools would have a difficult time making their records available and asking them to do this is honestly a bit much. They shouldn't have to provide verification as a service, that's not what they're in business to do. They'd end up wanting MySpace/Facebook wanting to pay for part of the verification process the school currently enacts.
Absolutely. While you can't watch your child every waking moment, monitoring their online habits (especially during these critical years) can make the difference between a little shit doing something like this and normal behavior.
Define 'kids'. Persons under the age of 18? Under the age of 13? Again, how do you verify that the 18 year old that just signed up isn't 14?
You have a problem with middle/high school-aged kids communicating with each other? When I was growing up, instant messaging was just beginning. Before that, it was phones. Now we've moved toward cell phones and social networking sites. Kids interact with each other because that's what they do. We don't sequester them from age four to 32 (and those that do that end up really, really fucked up). Again, I don't believe that there is a good way to verify members. Hell, half the point of (most) MySpace pages is to draw yourself as this person that you likely are not. Your name is not ~~~BROOKLYN QUEEN~~~.
I guess I just misunderstood you then, your original post said that you wouldn't be to blame if a girl came up to you in a bar and you told her you weren't interested and she killed herself. That I would agree with, however if you were to befriend the girl under false pretense and then proceed to do whatever you could to destroy her emotionally and socially I would say you are at least partially to blame. If there was a real "josh" who did that then I would find him at fault. I wasn't as much focused on the lies so much as the obvious harrassment that was legally overlooked because it was online.
EDIT: Also, I really don't have an axe to grind with social networking sites, I don't personally use them, but they're fine. I was lumping them in because they were involved, weather they were at blame or not, and I wanted it to be part of the discussion. I personally don't feel they are right for teenagers, but that's just my opinion.
Double Edit: I don't think that cell phones and IM clients should be in the same evolutionary line as social networking sites as the above poster suggested. They both are used to continue already existing social relationships, as where networking sites are used to create new ones with anonymous sources. Just being technical there though, no real argument otherwise.
Yes, we get that harassment is bad and harassment online should be just as much a crime as harassment in person, the problem is that you want to assign responsibility for the suicide to the people who harassed the girl when harassment isn't reasonably expected to be responded to with suicide. You're trying to conflate separate issues. Yes, it makes sense to punish people for harassment, no it doesn't make sense to treat the case differently because the victim committed suicide.
Given that at the beginning of the thread you stated openly that you are opposed to social-networking sites on principle it is reasonable to expect that people are going to think you have something against social-networking sites. Couple that with your suggestion of assigning blame to them or requiring them to invade the privacy of their users to make sure they're the sort of users that "should" be allowed on those sites. And your repeated claims that they are bad for people. I mean you haven't exactly cast them as neutral parties with regard to the suicide.
Why can't you do that with AIM? Or with internet forums, which you keep neglecting to comment on? And what makes you so sure that the majority of Facebook users have never met the majority of people in their friends lists? What about Facebook prevents users from insisting on hanging out in person before committing too much emotionally to people they meet through Facebook? And one more time what makes internet forums exempt from the problems you claim are inherent in the design of social-networking sites? Or IRC? Or Vent?
Oh and I'm still waiting to hear what you're basing this claim on.
Edit: beaten by Daedalus
first off, let me clear up something... my main angry point here is that the family that harrassed the girl should be charged with harrassment. Her suicide is tragic, but I would feel the same way if she hadn't killed herself. I can't walk into some arcade and make fun of a kid for sucking at street fighter and keep laughing at him in person without being asked to leave/possibly arrested for harrasment, so I don't see why these people should walk because it was "online". I never meant to imply specifically that they should be given a murder charge, but I don't think they should be entirely off the hook legally either. They had involvement with her mental abuse.
I'm talking about myspace and facebook because myspace is the website in question in the story itself. I listed every possible responsible party followed by a question mark in the OP, leaving it up to everyone else to debate. I feel they aren't responsible for the death, or the harrasment directly, but with something like a hundred million registered accounts I think they should take a little more time to verify things, or at least be held to a higher standard then the "bare legal minimum", that's all.
I've got no fact to support the "teenage kids on myspace are more likely to accept random friends because a high friend count is a sign of popularity", and if you can find evidence to the contrary you're welcome to, but I still think that's the case.
These people should be branded, Scarlet Letter style. They should live with the stigma of being horrible, horrible human beings for the rest of their lives. They should be forced to undergo the stigma of being singled out and treated like shit. Seriously.
Myspace- not so much.
And the law covers internet harassment now. Being angry that we can't go back and retroactively charge crimes is silly given the precedence it would set.
So you want to hold them to some standard other than the legal standard? How exactly do you propose going about that? Have you considered the precedent it would set? Do you have an explanation why the same should not be expected of internet forums? I'm aware that this event took place on Myspace or whatever but it could just as easily take place on a forum, as they are functionally not all that different from social-networking sites with the added monkey-wrench that most people who post on forums have not met many or any of the people they're interacting with on those forums, based on your complaints about Facebook/Myspace you should be vastly more concerned about internet forums because the characteristics you're labeling as dangerous are a lot more pronounced on internet forums. Do you also think that Verizon and AT&T should be charged as accomplices in drug-deals that go on on their service-networks? And how do you propose they verify things exactly? You can't expect people to agree to your assertions when you haven't told them what exactly your assertions entail.
I'm not the one making a claim, the burden of proof is on you. I'm not going to go "oh I can't prove you're wrong so we should just take it as given that people mostly only use these sites to build big friend-counts to pretend they're more popular than they are". If you're going to make claims you're going to have to back them up or just accept that people are allowed to ignore or discard them as unfounded.
There is nothing that can or should be done in this situation (post-incident) beyond changing the law for future cases, which has happened.
I'm still waiting for the "how" on this.
Then please stop saying it in every reply and we'll stop talking about it.
Assuming the dead chick never said, "Hey, leave me alone," what exactly are we making illegal? (And assuming she did want to be left alone, why not just block the person? We need a law to protect those too dumb to find the "Block Sender" button on their chat program?) Is it that someone said something mean? Is it that someone misrepresented who they were? Again, welcome to 99% of the goddamned internet.
I think the criteria for something counting as harassment online has to be extremely steep compared to in-person harassment, because the internet makes it so bleedingly easy to ignore people. What with email filters, targeting blocking, and the simple process of not reading something by someone you don't like, the burden of being harassed digitally is simply not comparable to that of being harassed in person except in the most egregious of cases.
The popular answer? One that's already been adopted by Porn web sites: Age Verification accounts. Now, I believe current age verification is done by credit cards, so we'd need to come up with some other way of verifying... Drivers license? Definitely not SIN number. And even if we did do this, they can still use other people's "age verification account" if they know their username/password.
Right now there is absolutely no way to keep kids out of websites like that.
Alternate answer: Big Brother. Buy a fingerprint reader for your computer, and register your paws with the government or some other group and use that as age verification. Or a retinal scanner. Something that can't be stolen, short of gouging out an eye or lopping off a finger.
I don't think we'd find that solution palatable.
Completely agree.
And VC, my point is that they should be tried under the laws as is, because I see no reason that an addendum to extend the law to cyberspace is even needed.