That is shameful but not surprising. I have heard of employers goggling prospective employers. It is scary what you can find out about people if you know where to look.
MSNBC did a sting operation with the police to catch online predators and a lot of the people they caught were on my space. They did a hole series on this and it is amazing who many people they caught. I am not saying don’t use it. Just use basic common sense. I agree with Josh Redstone there is nothing wrong with participating in an online community and no I don’t think myspace is evil. Just like anything in life, you have to use your brain and be careful what info you put out there.
I’m making a group on Myspace for Lucid Dreamers. If anyone from this site wants to go on it, feel free to join up! Its can be found at groups.myspace.com/luciddreamingrules
I hope you and people on myspace who LD aswell join up.
Let’s hope it was a parody profile… (Or at least I hope). Use the group to refer people over to Ld4all…I know some other groups I’m in do this frequently.
I don’t think it would be a good business decision to do that.
Plus there aren’t enough laws governing the internet to hold them responsible for making such information available.
To me it’s an improvement and also a huge red flag.
Which reminds me. I made a profile for myself. I really made it to see what kind of content my daughter had in hers. I know, I’m sneaky and mean. But, this stuff is soooooo available to freaks and people take advantage of too much.
That is really my point. Simply removing content that some other person decides is objectionable does nothing to protect children.
In fact I think the new policy is actually more dangerous because it provides parents with a false sense of security. I don’t have to worry now because myspace is protecting my kid.
I agree and I don’t agree. If you can understand that. I still believe it’s a parent’s responsibility to follow-up on what their children are doing on the internet.
I do see where it would create a false sense of security though. That particular article was sent to me and although, I posted it as a ‘progress’. It was obvious that the new owners now are looking to make it have a more positive appearance. Not just for parents but for the kids as well. IMO, they see something like that and only the site has something to gain and that’s more profiles.
There also wasn’t enough information in the article itself to make me feel ‘comfortable’ but I do feel that it’s moving in the right direction. And if it’s just a scam then I’ll be the first to admit I was wrong.
Myspace wasn’t originally designed for kids. You had to be over 18 to join, then 16, they loosened the registeration proccess altogether eventually since the majority ended up being kids faking ages, and set it so anyone under 16? was always a private profile and required you to be added as a friend to see/message the person.
While sites that claim to be safe for most ages, pg, pg-13 whatever they do need to actively look at all profiles and check everything. Which would never really be done as new members register constantly, thus relying on people to report issues.
But all in all it’s down to parents to ultimately control what their children are allowed to view in their home.
Now I have never been to myspace so I do not really know what it is like or what kind of content is on it. But given the fact that the parent company that owns myspace is also the same company that owns fox news, my guess is that the content they removed was most likely posts they found objectionable due to political or “so called moral” issues and not to protect children. They simply used the excuse of protecting children to remove the content. Without such an excuse I doubt they could have gotten away with it. The community would never accept such an infringement on free speech. However, when clocked in the guise of protecting children the government or site owner can get away with anything, even infringing on free speech. They not only get to rid themselves of content they simply do not like, but they come out as heros for doing it. The sad reality is that noone is really protected.
The reality is that there is no way any website or forum can protect children. Look at ld4all. While at first glance it would appear to be perfectly safe for children. However, there have been very in-depth discussions here on everything from religion and sex to rape and incest. Moreover, we have a chat room and we can PM each other, both of which can give a would be predator the opportunity to connect with children.
We need to teach not only our kids, but ourselves as well, how to be safe in cyberspace. We can not rely on the government or site owner to do it for us. We all need to be careful how much information we put out on the internet.
Let’s hope it was a parody profile… (Or at least I hope). Use the group to refer people over to Ld4all…I know some other groups I’m in do this frequently. 
