I cited your post and the original post that cited you on GigaOM in my article here http://touchbasehq.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/parents-thoughts-on-current-social-networks/. I am of the full opinion that these social networks can never really do enough to protect privacy because they weren’t built for families and especially not for children. They were built for college students where the whole point was to share. In the article I point out some other things about why current solutions won’t work.

I would love to talk to you more about this Danah, please feel free to email me to continue the conversation!

*by the way, this is the third time trying to submit this post, I can’t get the question right even though I think I’m answering it correctly :/*

One detail on the stats about exerting control however —erasing something on your wall, unfriending, muting. These could also mean that *friends* of younger users make actual mistakes on their page. I must check the report itself, but I have to say, I never had to correct my colleagues, friends or older member of my family; my younger cousins and their friends however… that’s a different story: they still try to figure out what makes sense. Because users tend to know, befriend & Friend users the same age, that might explain part the stats, rather than informed, actual or sophisticated concern.

The rest of the data tends to say that those accidents seem to allow younger people to understand the mechanism better, encouraging realistic case study & story telling as a teaching method, rather than technical education about raw specs — but it’s a shame such your review of a great report gets confused on stats.

PS: Great design update. Unless it’s been here long, and I should stop using Readability on properly designed sites.

Shameless plug: we’ll be talking about these issues at the ACM Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in San Jose next month. More info here.