Gawker: valleywag, teens

MySpace's new age restrictions made simple

Nick Douglas — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 19:31:06 EDT

MySpace bowed to critics yesterday and stepped up earlier minor-protection efforts. The social site announced new restrictions that take effect on its site next week. These restrictions (collectively called "no such thing as a free speech") sound confusing, but they're really quite simple:

Users over 18 can't make friendships with users aged 14 or 15 without knowing their e-mail addresses or names. This will be flawless, because no one ever finds a stranger's e-mail address online.
Anyone under 18 can talk to anyone else under 18, because 17-year-olds don't commit sexual assault.
Online dating sites won't advertise to people under 18. Actually, this is because people under 18 don't have credit cards, but spinning it as user protection was a clever move.
The annoying "punch the monkey" ads will now double as thumbprint-scan ID checks.
Every user under 18 can still say they're 20, and every user over 18 can still say they're 14.
Co-founder Tom Anderson (pictured) is accused of sexually harassing the 2 million minors he's friended.

MySpace to Add Restrictions to Protect Younger Teenagers [NY Times]

Bad idea roundup: BusinessWeek gets schooled

Nick Douglas — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 18:38:08 EDT

Martin Sorrell, head of UK advertising giant WPP, says media owners should put everything behind a pay wall. Yeah, that seemed to work six years ago. [Online Press Gazette]
MySpace says it will restrict dirty messages between teens, which is like McDonald's restricting hamburgers. Remember the good old days when the Internet was dangerous? [NYT]
Pictured: BusinessWeek, running out of cliched covers of its own, takes a cliched cover from a year-old Seattle Weekly. The latter paper is not amused. [Seattle Weekly]

MySpace: a waste of good half-nakedness

ndouglas — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 19:16:20 EST

Silicon Valley schools are blocking kids from MySpace after finding profiles with booze, cleavage, and (oh noes!) flame wars. The Valley is going through the same social-site backlash as the rest of the nation: teens want to be loud and dirty in public, and parents think their kids should keep quiet. Guess these people have never walked down Haight Street.

Social-tech expert danah boyd has championed students' rights to free speech before, saying that kids will only find other places to mess around.

Which is precisely why teens shouldn't be posting their dirty pictures and suggestive jokes on MySpace. They should be on Suicide Girls and camboy sites, making money off this stuff. Isn't this the home of monetizing content? Barely-legal teens of Silicon Valley, be responsible: stop the free half-nakedness.

Whose space is it, anyway? [Mercury News]