Try seeing MySpace as a digital public and imagine if you had to give an ID to go to a park because some people happen to meet in parks to go out on dates. Of course, i worry that this is the direction our government is going in in physical spaces as well – random identity checks and national IDs. But is this something that we should promote? Something we should set as a precedent digitally?

The folks at MySpace do look at the 1.7M photos that are uploaded daily, but they’re scanning for porn and illegal material, not trying to check for ages. They are dealing with the same kinds of illegal behavior that cops stop in the park.

What is the value for asking for identification? What are the costs? I would argue that it puts an undue burden on people who simply want to go outside and hang out. Your suggestion also puts a huge undue burden on minors who don’t have IDs, on people from foreign countries (especially minors). I totally understand that it might help prevent teens, but is it really the best way? Does it not limit more than it protects?

Do structural restrictions really help people learn to grow up and make wise decisions? Or does it just make the problem appear to go away? 21+ IDs for clubs and alcohol purchasing have certainly not stopped alcohol consumption by minors. I would argue that it has made it worse.

I worry about the ways in which we try to restrict freedom online out of our good efforts to prevent horrors. Unfortunately, bad things will happen. But the actual magnitude is very small. Do we want to lose more freedoms just for the hopes that we might prevent a fraction of those bad situations? Or can we use education to build trust and social responsibility back into our society so that people can be free and safe?

Recently I’ve had a chance to follow some stories in the media, where I had inside information, as in I KNOW what’s going on.

In every single case, the media version has differed significantly from what I know to be true. Not just on the details, but on the basic issues.

My sad and troubling and entirely unsurprising conclusion: The news media are no longer trustworthy.

If you substituted the words MySpace for Elvis Presley or rock n roll the story could have been written 50 years ago. Whilst times change, the publics taste in news and their fear of new cultural phenomena doesn’t. MySpace is in a classic part of media/sub-cultural adoption curve that video games, rock music, the beat poets, acid house (in the UK at least) and television have all been through.

However, last summer our (then) 15 year old daughter ‘chatted’ with a 24 year old man who she ended up sneaking out of the house to sleep with on two occasions. He may face statutory rape charges and will at least have the arrest on his record for anyone to find in a background search for the next 7 years.

My problem with MySpace is it still looks as though they are not doing their ‘due diligence’ with regard to protecting younger users. They say 14 and 15 year olds profiles are private and accessible only by invitation. Kids invite people all the time and our daughter simply lied that she was 16 to get a public profile. I’ve seen multitudes of young-looking profiles with ridiculous ages such as 101 or 88 and such to get around the private restriction.

Which brings up the question of why _all_ profiles under 18 are not private and heavily restricted? The age of consent in several states is still 18 and that is also the age at which we expect fully ‘adult’ behavior from our youth.

Some dating sites I’ve seen offer the option of sending in a copy of a state-issued ID to become “verified” – people know that’s you and you’re the age you claim and you haven’t just culled somebody else’s pic off the internet. MySpace doesn’t have to be the fake ID police, but they’d be doing more than just taking millions of teenagers’ word for it! The utilization of verified, but uncharged credit cards that many adult sites use seems to be reasonably effective also.

But probably the biggest oversight MySpace is making is not screening uploaded photos. Again the examples of dating sites shows that no one dies of delayed gratification from having to wait maybe 48 hours to have uploaded pictures checked for “acceptable” content. And some of these dating sites allow photos of sex acts so you can imagine their definition of ‘_un_acceptable’!

Surfing just a few clicks from my daughter’s MySpace profile I run into breasts galore and genitalia of both sexes in various states of arousal as well as acts of penetration etc, all in violation of their policies. MySpace takes those down when notified but really, who out there is going to surf past an attractive erotic picture and say to themselves “that’s gotta go!”?

MySpace will remove it, but why can it get there in the first place?! It even occured to me that MySpace is flirting with charges of child porn because ultimately it is _their_ responsibility for the content on their website! That may not bite them in the rear until some prosecutor looking to make a name for themselves goes after them. MySpace would almost certainly win against such charges, but the old saying “there is no such thing as bad publicity” is not always true.

Unfortunately, like many businesses, they seem to be taking the path of least expenditure by not hiring the extra staff and spending the money on security technology solutions despite HUGE growth and profits. I hope they wise up before some tragedy occurs that really _CAN_ be placed largely at their doorstep.

Don’t get me wrong, I am completely against any form of internet censorship for those who can prove they are 18, but younger ‘surfers’ are not being protected from their own naivete and lack of experience, sometimes to their detriment.

danah boyd monitors the media misinformation around youth social spaces and underscores the need for a more nuanced response -