LiveJournal Academic Research Bibliography

Alice Marwick has recently put together a topical, semi-annotated bibliography of academic research on LiveJournal: LiveJournal Academic Research Bibliography. She has tried to surface all known scholarly research concerning LiveJournal. This bibliography was commissioned by LiveJournal (where I’m on the advisory board and played a role in making this happen). This is a great resource for all scholars who are interested in LJ-related issues.

(Note: this complements the bibliography I maintain of research on social network sites.)

Putting Privacy Settings in the Context of Use (in Facebook and elsewhere)

A few days ago, Gilad’s eyes opened wide and he called me over to look at his computer. He was on Facebook and he had just discovered a privacy loophole. He had maximized his newsfeed to get as many photo-related bits as possible. As a result, he was regularly informed when his Friends commented on other people’s photos, including photos of people with whom he was not Friends or in the same network as. This is all fine and well. Yet, he found that he could click on those photos and, from there, see the entire photo albums of Friends-of-Friends. Once one of his Friends was tagged in one of those albums, he could see the whole album, even if he couldn’t see the whole profile of the person who owned the album. This gave him a delirious amount of joy because he felt as though he could see photos not intended for him… and he liked it.

There are multiple explanations for what is happening. This may indeed be a bug on the part of Facebook’s. It’s more likely a result of people allowing photos tagged of them to be visible to Friends of Friends through the overly complex privacy settings that even Gilad didn’t know about. Either way, Gilad felt as though he was seeing photos not intended for him. Likewise, I’d bank money that his kid sister’s Friends did not think that tagging those photos with her name would make the whole album available to her brother.

Facebook’s privacy settings are the most flexible and the most confusing privacy settings in the industry. Over and over again, I interview teens (and adults) who think that they’ve set their privacy settings to do one thing and are shocked (and sometimes horrified) to learn that their privacy settings do something else. Furthermore, because of things like tagged photos, people are often unaware of the visibility of content that they did not directly contribute. People continue to get themselves into trouble because they lack the control that they think they have. And this ain’t just about teenagers. Teachers/professors – are you _sure_ that the photos that your friends post and tag with your name aren’t visible to your students? Parents – I know many of you joined to snoop on your kids… now that your high school mates are joining, are your kids snooping on you? Power dynamics are a bitch, whether your 16 or 40.

Why are privacy settings still an abstract process removed from the context of the content itself? Privacy settings shouldn’t just be about control; they should be about the combination of awareness, context, and control. You should understand the visibility of an act during the moment of the act itself and whenever you are accessing the tracings of the act.

Tech developers… I implore you… put privacy information into the context of the content itself. When I post a photo in my album, let me see a list of EVERYONE who can view that photo. When I look at a photo on someone’s profile, let me see everyone else who can view that photo before I go to write a comment. You don’t get people to understand the scale of visibility by tweetling a few privacy settings every few months and having no idea what “Friends of Friends” actually means. If you have that setting on and you go to post a photo and realize that it will be visible to 5,000 people included 10 ex-lovers, you’re going to think twice. Or you’re going to change your privacy settings.

In an ideal world where complex access control wouldn’t destroy a database, I would argue that you should be able to edit the list of people who can see a particular artifact at the time of upload. Thus, if I posted a photo and saw that it was visible to 100 people, I could manually go through and remove 10 of those people without having to create a specific group that is everyone but the unwanted people. I know that this is a database disaster so I can’t ask for it… yet. Y’all should make large-n combinatorial functions computationally feasible eventually, right? ::wink:: In the meantime, let me at least see the visibility level and have the ability to adjust my broad settings in the context of use.

Frankly… I don’t understand why tech companies aren’t doing this. Is it because you don’t want users to realize how visible their content is? Is it because your relational databases are directed and this is annoying to compute? Or is there some other reason that I can’t think of? But seriously, if you want to stop the social disasters that stem from people fucking up their privacy settings, why not put it into context? Why not let them grok how visible their acts are by providing a feedback loop that’ll let them see what’s going on? Please tell me why this is not a rational approach!

In the meantime.. for everyone else… have you looked at your privacy settings lately? Did you really want your profile coming up first when people search for your name in Google? Did you really want those photos tagged with your name to be visible to friends-of-friends? Or your status updates visible to everyone in all of your networks? Think about it. Look at your settings. Do your expectations match with what those setting say?

(en francais)

the final throes

Last week, I returned to Berkeley to defend my dissertation on the Day of Atonement (ironic, eh?). This involved both a public dissertation talk and a private defense. The public talk was an opportunity for me to share my findings with my department. The private defense was an opportunity for my committee to share their critiques and feedback with me. For those sitting on pins and needles, don’t worry, I passed. What this means is that my committee has now handed me a tree’s worth of paper covered in red pen and 2.5 hours worth of feedback to integrate in the next 6-8 weeks. Luckily, their general attitude was: “Good job! You’re almost there! Here’s a few thoughts for the dissertation and a large stack of thoughts for the book.”

This now means that I’m officially in the final throes of my PhD. I’m not yet Dr. but I’m close… real close… the kind of close where failing to finish is not an option. The kind of close where looking at my dissertation makes me want to vomit. The kind of close where I’ve started dreaming about the next project. The kind of close where I’m no longer convinced that I’m going to fail and where I’m completely shocked that this is for realz. Of course, it’s not yet over… I still need to edit this puppy and get it into a format that the Borg will accept at which point I will need to deftly enact circus tricks to get it through the layers of UC bureaucracy. But still… close! I can see the light!

The whole defense process was pretty emotionally overwhelming. I’m super duper thankful for the most amazing committee a girl can ask for. I call them the goddesses because they have been truly supportive in ways that I wasn’t really prepared for. That said, I can’t help but miss Peter. I wasn’t alone in this thought. Right before my defense, Mimi posted a Tweet that got me all choked up: “happy to get to play proud advisor today though really wishing a certain other advisor was here to share the moment.” We were all missing him. Many of those who attended my public talk had him on their mind and when I got to the end of my slide deck, I concluded with a dedication to Peter. Upon seeing tears in the eyes of people in the room, I had to choke back my own for the second time that day.

It’s weird to be nearing the end and to realize that I’m about to move on to a new phase in my life. Everyone says that post-PhD is much better than grad school. I hope they’re right. My body certainly hopes they’re right. At the same time, it’s been an unbelievable 5.5 years. I can’t help but think of all that I’ve learned and done and the amazing people that I’ve been able to work with. I still can’t believe that Berkeley’s iSchool and my committee let me get away with all that I’ve done. When I started at Berkeley, Peter promised me that it would be the perfect place to cause trouble and grow into my own kind of scholar. He vowed to protect me as long as I vowed to kick ass and take names. I can’t help but smile thinking about those conversations and I hope that, somewhere out there, he’s smiling too.

Handheld Learning in London

I’m heading to London on Sunday to speak at Handheld Learning 2008 with a bunch of other cool smart thinking types. I’ve been remiss in posting this because I’ve been totally focused on my dissertation but I’m looking forward to this event and I think that some of you (especially all y’all Londoners) might enjoy it. w00t!!

Update: The video of my talk can be found here.

teens, dating, friendship, and school dances

When I read the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of why teens have eschewed dates for school dances, I wanted to scream. This shift has nothing to do with “the way young people view personal relationships in the age of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter” (and not just because teens don’t use Twitter in significant numbers yet). And this is certainly not because teens are being “shaped” by these technologies such that they “consider friendship the highest form of compliment, making dating, and sometimes even high school love, irrelevant.” Even in the context of the article, the supposed experts and teens are voicing very different explanations for what’s going on.

School dances have traditionally been structured around mating rituals, dating back to a point in time when parents encouraged teens to go on such structured dates in order to find the ideal partner. This is no longer the era in which we live. Parents are no longer encouraging serious relationships in high school; quite the opposite. Even teens are no longer treating high school as the place to find their future husband/wife. Decades ago, teen dating turned into a different kind of ritual, one driven by status and validation and decoupled from pair bonding. While not having a date had long been stigmatized, the cost became purely social rather than marriage.

For decades after school dances were about pair bonding, teens scrambled to get dates to school dances purely as a form of plumage – a prom date was simply proof that one wasn’t a social pariah. Many teens went to school dances with people with whom they had no sexual relations whatsoever. Yet, by the 1990s, LGBT pressures started mounting actions against heteronormative dynamics at school dances. Some schools started allowing same-sex partners to go to school dances together. In some places, teen girls started repurposing this “freedom” to opt to go to the school dance with their best friend even though there was no romantic interest involved. The date-based school dance ritual began crumbling decades ago in different ways across the country. Thankfully, schools caught up and many stopped requiring dates to attend. This, in turn, motivated many teens to eschew dates altogether.

If you’re an adult, think back to your own teenage years. How many of you hated your homecoming or prom date? How many of you went with a friend of the opposite sex with no romantic feelings? How many of you stressed about finding a date, keeping a relationship going long enough to make it to the dance, or otherwise dealing with the potential dramas of being single for the dance? Now, imagine if the school said that you no longer needed to have a date. And imagine if the social norms caught up so that not having a date was not a stigmatized reality. Would you have gone with friends and simply had a good time? Hell yeah you would’ve.

What’s happening is not a radical shift in teen friendship practices. It’s about the collapse of an outmoded, outdated mating ritual. It has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with social norms relieving unnecessary pressures that no one liked anyhow. Teens aren’t going date-less because friendship is suddenly more important. Teens are going date-less because it’s socially acceptable and teens haven’t wanted the pressure to have a date for decades. Dating is much simpler when you don’t have to secure a date for an important night months ahead of time and then fret about the possibility that that tenuous relationship might fall apart. Even teens who are dating would prefer to buy a single ticket, go with their friends, and meet up with their significant other at the event.

Why this is so shocking to people is beyond me. Teen dances are finally looking more like 20-something dances than images of dances from the 1950s. How do 20-somethings to to bars, clubs, and other events that involve dancing? They gather with their friends, and go out en masse. Those who are dating include their significant other in the group and there are often networks of connections to other groups going out. The fact that teens are modeling 20-somethings should not be surprising to anyone. Teens have long modeled up. Why shouldn’t they be modeling contemporary practices instead of those that only exist in the movies?

Please… can we get real about teens? Can we please realize that what they’re doing is totally logical given broader societal norms and not some radical cognitive change?

PS: Teens are still dating and many find having a significant other to be important. Some value that sig-other more than they value their friends, but the old sayings of “bros before hos” and “chicks before dicks” still stand in most communities. But to think that teen dating is gone is completely foolish. Just because teens don’t want “dates” doesn’t mean that they don’t want sig-others.

Teens, Video Games, and Civics

Last week, Pew released a report on “Teens, Video Games, and Civics” that made its way around the web (see posts by Mimi Ito, Amanda Lenhart, Cathy Davidson). Briefly, some findings:

Almost all (97%) of teens play games. They play many different kinds of games and gender is a salient factor.
Gaming is often social and teens often game with people they know.
Parental monitoring of game play varies.
Teens encounter both pro-social and anti-social behavior while gaming.
There are civic dimensions to video game play.

I want to follow-up on that last finding and the connected findings because it’s important. Games are regularly referenced as proof that the world is ending. The stereotypical image of a gamer is an oily-haired, pimply-faced geeky boy with no social skills or interest in human interaction. The prevalence of gaming amongst youth dispels that notion, but there is still a myth that those who game are anti-social. As such, it is often assumed that gaming makes people anti-social, anti-community, anti-civic.

Pew’s findings show that there is no correlation between civic/political activity and gaming. In other words, high participation in gaming does not decrease civic participation. That said, gaming characteristics and in-person social gaming are correlated with civic engagement. Likewise, in-depth participation that involves social interaction related to the game (like participating in forums) is also correlated with civic engagement. Most importantly, “civic gaming experiences are more equally distributed than many other civic learning opportunities” because teens can get access to civic gaming experiences even when they can’t get access to other forms of civic life.

In other words, participation in gaming does not cause a decrease in civic participation and, if anything, certain forms of gaming activity are correlated with civic engagement (although causality cannot be determined).

All too often, we blame technology for the downfall of society. Gaming has long been the super demon, the crux of media effects panics. It’s fantastic to have a study to point to that conclusively shows that our fears make no sense. Yet, this also raises important questions:

If there are correlations between civic engagement and gaming practices, can we engender certain forms of civic participation through gaming? In other words, is the link connected to other factors or is there an element of causality at play?
If we understand that teens with certain practices are more likely to be civically minded, can we tap them there for other forms of civic engagement?
Are there ways to design games that encourage civically minded participation?
What will it take for people to stop fearing games and realize that learning takes place beyond the classroom?

Understanding Socio-Technical Phenomena in a Web2.0 Era

Earlier this week, I had the honor of giving a talk at the opening of the Microsoft Research New England Lab. I have uploaded a crib of that talk, entitled “Understanding Socio-Technical Phenomena in a Web2.0 Era” for anyone who is interested in what I had to say. The abstract is here:

Web2.0 signals an iteration in Internet culture, shaped by changes in technology, entrepreneurism, and social practices. Beneath the buzzwords that flutter around Web2.0, people are experiencing a radical reworking of social media. Networked public spaces that once catered to communities of interest are now being leveraged by people of all ages to connect with people they already know. Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook enable people to map out their social networks in order to create public spaces for interaction. People can use social media to vocalize their thoughts, although having a blog or video feed doesn’t guarantee having an audience. Tagging platforms allow people to find, organize and share content in entirely new ways. Mass collaborative projects like Wikipedia allow people to collectively create valuable cultural artifacts. These are but a few examples of Web2.0.

Getting to the core of technologically-mediated phenomena requires understanding the interplay between everyday practices, social structures, culture, and technology. In this talk, I will map out some of what’s currently taking place, offer a framework for understanding these phenomena, and discuss strategies for researching emergent practices.

Videos of my talk along with the other talks at the event can be found here. For those interested in computer science education (or CS in general), I strongly recommend the one by Erik Demaine (where he makes a compelling case for how computer science is everywhere). For those into design, definitely check out the talk by Bill Buxton (where he refutes the notion that everyone is a designer). Both of these talks had me giggling and smiling for hours.

the Internet Lexicon

Over at the Berkman Center, a bunch of Fellows put together The Internet Lexicon (spearheaded by none other than The Great David Weinberger). The Internet Lexicon is “a wiki-based list of Webby people whose names are treated as if they were definable words.” To make me giggle uncomfortably, someone (presumably David) defined me:

boyd, danah (v) to provide an environment for floating new ideas. E.g., “Sociologists were boyd by the research showing the class differences between Facebook and MySpace.”

Some other entertaining ones:

shirky, clay (n) A tool for opening the most securely locked objects. E.g., “We’ll never get past this door…unless someone has brought a shirky.”

wu, tim (v) to attempt to persuade while staying strictly neutral.

zuckerman, ethan (n) One who pays equal attention to all species, no matter how exotic or unfamiliar. E.g., “Who takes care of the zoo? Why, the zuckerman, of course!”

zittrain, jonathan (n) a passenger locomotive conveying one in a direction over which one may be powerless. E.g., “I wish I could stand and pull the emergency brake cord to prevent this vehicle from plunging over a cliff, but it is, alas, a zittrain.”

And of course, one cannot forget David:

weinberger, david (n) a delicious sandwich that makes sense of countless miscellaneous ingredients in an entertaining fashion. E.g., “The acclaimed chef threw up his hands and let his customers combine his mis-en-place, venison and precious truffles into fantastic weinbergers.”

::giggle:: Happy One Web Day!! Cheers to the Internet and its role in shaping society! ::clink::

I will be joining Microsoft Research in January

Guess who has a post-dissertation job? [Yes, that implies I’m actually going to finish this *#$@! dissertation.] ::bounce:: In January, I will be joining the newly minted Microsoft Research New England in Boston, MA. w00000t!!!!! I couldn’t be more ecstatic.

For those who don’t know Microsoft Research (MSR), it’s a pure research lab. What this means is that researchers are hired to advance the state of knowledge in their respective areas of research. MSR is a different structure than Microsoft proper and researchers are expected to publish in peer-reviewed journals and they are evaluated on the contributions they make to the field. Researchers are welcome to collaborate with whoever they please, engage with students at local institutions, and co-teach classes if that’ll help them fulfill their research agendas. Researchers are welcome to pursue the research topics that they find to be interesting and important. In essence, being a MSR researcher is quite similar to being a faculty at a research institution. To the shock of most folk, MSR is not about directly contributing to the bottom line of Microsoft, but about advancing knowledge that will benefit the future of computing.

As many of you know, I’ve been quite cagey about the possibility of the future for quite some time. I’ve been frustrated with academic restrictions and fearful that academia wouldn’t let me do the kind of research that I wanted to do. I’ve been equally scared of industrial research because I’ve watched too much research get trapped down behind closed corporate walls. I’ve always been in awe of MSR because of its openness but I wasn’t really jumping to move to Redmond. I had been pretty set that I was going to go independent and pay the bills through freelancing. Then, a funny combination of events happened.

It all began with Dopplr. Linda Stone noticed that I was swinging through Seattle and she called me up and told me that I had to do dinner with her. Linda’s plots are always tremendous so of course I said yes. When I arrived, she introduced me to Jennifer Chayes and Christian Borgs, the physicists who were starting the new MSR lab. Jennifer immediately began interrogating me about my research and about social science more broadly. To say Jennifer & I clicked is a bit of an understatement. Like me, Jennifer is loud, crazy, and intense. We got along like peas in a pod and spent the night chattering away. When she told me that I should come work for her, I laughed it off and didn’t think much about it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Jennifer and Christian’s vision for the lab aligned with my view of research. They believe in interdisciplinary work, believe in the ways that new ideas can come from unexpected collaborations. While I know a lot of social scientists who curl their nose at the idea of a lab full of physicists, mathematicians, and economists, I find that quite appealing. I love the idea of such a diverse group thinking about how the world works from different angles. Plus, meeting the folks at the new lab – Henry Cohn, Yael Kalai, Adam Kalai, and Butler Lampson – only made me more intrigued by it. Everyone was so ridiculously nice and even though we didn’t work on the same problems we found funny intersections.

The more that I talked with folks at MSR, the more I fell in love with the possibility of going there. And then I started meeting with execs and realized that what MSR researchers were telling me fit with broader strategy. I met with Rick Rashid, the head of MSR, who explained why he started MSR and how he saw it fit into the company. I met with Ray Ozzie (who I’ve known and adored for quite some time) and he confirmed the importance of research for the future of Microsoft. Both of them made me feel fully confident that my approach to research would not only be tolerated but welcomed. Plus, there’s a broad desire to understand the intersections between computing and all things social which is straight up my alley.

As the pieces came together, I realized that it just made complete sense. Going to MSR will allow me to continue the research I do and it will give me a productive, collaborative, interdisciplinary environment in which to do it. There’s amazing work at MSR concerning social media and even those at MSR-NE who are not working on social media are more than open to the topics engendered by it and more than ecstatic to engage with me. Being in a room full of scientists might not seem like the most obvious fit, but really, you have to meet them to understand how invigorating an environment it is.

Personally, going to MSR will mean a continuation of the good things that I do and a reduction of the things that exhaust me. I will continue to publish, go to conferences, and blog. I will keep my Berkman Center fellowship. I will continue public speaking, political interventions, and sitting on advisory boards. I will get involved in the intellectual communities in Cambridge and collaborate with scholars. I will escape dissertation hell (w00t!). I will escape IRB bureaucracy and have a much more sane ethics review process. I will stop consulting and doing private corporate talks. I will get to lower travel to a sane level. All of this will be possible because I will get paid to do the research that I want to do.

I have no doubt that this move prompts concerned questions from those who know me as well as those who don’t, so let me take a moment to pre-emptively respond to criticisms that I’ve already heard…

But you hated Boston… It’s true that Boston and I weren’t the closest of friends. We’ve called a truce and we’re going to see what happens. One thing is for certain: I can’t wait to get back to some very dear friends (although I will miss my west-coast pals). And I *cannot* wait to get back to my favorite gym in the whole wide word: Healthworks. Mmmm… oh goddess do I love that woman-friendly place. I’m even kinda excited by the idea of turtlenecks. I think I look HOTT in turtlenecks.
But you’re a Mac fiend… In every company I’ve ever worked for, I’ve always used products produced by competitors. I think that companies who expect employees to buy into their product line hook, line, and sinker are cults. Much can be learned by understanding why people know about your product and prefer a different one. There are plenty of Microsoft products that I use and adore, but I ain’t giving up my beloved Xanadu. And, surprisingly, Microsoft respects this and is willing to let me continue to work on a Mac.
But industry research is selling out! When research is useful, people use it. It doesn’t matter if you’re in industry or academia – if you publish for others to read, you’re a fool if you don’t think it’ll get used. MSR is giving me the opportunity to direct my research agenda and produce scholarship for the public good. They will inevitably use what I produce, but they would’ve anyhow. In any other configuration, I would have (and have) consulted for private companies to make ends meet. There is no doubt that I will effectively consult for Microsoft but my research, like always, will be for the public good. I will continue to publish and I will probably publish more since I won’t be writing grant applications or consulting.
But job security!?!? I find it odd that academics always point to job security as the reason to stay in academia because I am watching too many of my favorite elder scholars struggle desperately to get research grants to keep their labs going. How is grant-driven academia that forces you to give up research to go out begging for grants considered job security? And besides, I’m happy to keep producing quality work steadily over time rather than racing the hamster wheel for 7 years. At least at MSR, I don’t have to wait to get tenure to be rebellious.
But Microsoft is the devil incarnate! Years ago, I crafted a post comparing search companies to evil nation states of the 20th century. I think that my metaphors still hold and I’ve already worked for (and survived) Japan and the States. There is plenty about Microsoft’s history that I have problems with. There are even issues today that I disagree with. But I’ve never been a part of a company (or a nation-state) that I fully agreed with. Even though I dream of going to Canada, I plan to stick it out here and push to make change. Likewise, even inside Microsoft, when I disagree, I will say so. I don’t think that Microsoft is the devil, but I think that they’ve done some really stupid things and are actually working hard to right some of their past wrongs. I commend them for this. And hopefully I can do some good by being there. When I told Bill Buxton that I intended to address this issue here, he offered another perspective: “there’s no merit to being an angel in heaven.” I like that. That’s a good one.

I have every expectation that folks out there will not understand my reasoning and will think poorly of me for choosing to go to MSR, but I’m utterly ecstatic. My interactions with folks at MSR have been non-stop fantabulous. It’s an intellectually stimulating environment where I will have the resources and space to do my research and the encouragement to pursue a social media agenda. And frankly, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to be a part of an invigorating research environment. I can’t wait to think about the intersections of science and social science. I can’t wait to begin a new project and publish, publish, publish. I’m a bit wary about the snow, but we’ll work on that one. At the end of the day, I couldn’t be more pleased. w00000t!!!!!

Oprah, Senate Bill 1738, Child Porn, and Pedophiles

When I first learned that Oprah was doing a show on internet predators, I was wary. Her site emphasized a list of rules for kids centered around “don’t talk to strangers” and centered around the language of “Internet sex predators” and linked to Dateline’s very problematic show. I was concerned that she might use her stature to further ongoing myths about online predation. Oprah proved me wrong. Her show wasn’t talking about internet predators in the sense most people do (although her website reinforces myths); her show focused on the connection between internet child pornography and physical molestation in communities.

Her show detailed the very real and very horrific child porn industry and the ways in which the content being produced continues to grow more and more graphic, especially as live videos are made of young children (often the man’s child) being molested and harmed based on requests by child porn consumers. An investigator detailed the ways in which child molesters use child porn to normalize their abuse of children that they know. Oprah repeatedly emphasized that most children know their molesters and that the real risks for molestation are very local – family members, neighbors, community members. The experts she brought in were very knowledgeable and clear about what they didn’t know. For example, the investigator made it clear that we simply don’t know the causality relations of consuming child porn and molestation but that data suggests that there is overlap a decent percentage of the time and that there is no doubt that large numbers of children are harmed in the making of this content. Three teenagers and their parents discussed one of their neighbors who was convicted of drugging and molesting them and at least 5 other of his daughter’s friends. This molester was found through his child porn consumption and investigators found videos of him molesting these girls. Although each of the three girls had their doubts about their friend’s dad, none of them knew that they were being molested while drugged until the videos were found.

The Internet connection is interesting in all of this. The investigator made it very clear that the Internet allows him to trace the networks of potential child porn distributors, but he simply does not have the resources to follow up on all of the leads. Oprah emphasized that only 2% of leads are ever followed. Although a few pot shots are taken at the Internet for enabling distribution, there’s an implicit message that the Internet is actually enabling investigators to get a better handle on the problem. That said, because of lack of resources, they simply cannot do anything about the issue. Oprah leverages this point to drive home an action item: call your Senators to ask them to pass Senate Bill 1738, the “PROTECT Our Children Act.” Unlike other bills meant to stop the Internet, 1738 focuses on providing resources for investigators, FBI, prosecutors, and other elements of law enforcement to investigate, prosecute, convict, and sentence molesters, partially through the channels of child pornography distribution.

Of course, 1738 is introduced by Biden and Obama (and Clinton) so there are questions of partisanship and I’ve heard rumblings that McCain introduced a similar bill. And there are questions of how much money should be spent. Unfortunately, I can’t really suss out what’s happening in the Senate around this bill. Why hasn’t it been passed? Is it all a matter of politics or are there real issues? Are there things in the bill I should be worried about? I read what I thought was the final text and it seems completely sane to me but maybe I’m missing something.

Still, at the end of the day, I have to commend Oprah for a very real and non-sensational portrait of one aspect of the child molestation issue. I’m also very thankful for her very practical realism about the Internet in this issue. The Internet is undoubtedly allowing easier access to child porn, but it is also allowing investigators to get at guys who show no other markers of their molestation. And I agree with the solution 100%: more funds for law enforcement and much higher penalties for molesters.

[Note: the emphasis on this show was the graphic child porn in which children are clearly abused or harmed in the making of content intended for distribution. There are other classes of child porn which are more complicated and require different prevention mechanisms. For example, porn that is the product of teens and tweens creating nude photos or sex videos of themselves or their friends, whether distributed intentionally or not, is a different class of child porn. The harm in these cases is not often in the making of the content, but the ways in which it gets distributed. Additionally, there are huge issues about how teens and tweens are getting validated or seeking validation by peers through such self-portraiture.]

danah boyd | apophenia

making connections where none previously existed