CBS News tech guy Larry Magid wrote a book on demystifying MySpace for parents and has a companion "SafeKids" Web site. So, he was a bit more than a casually interested interviewer of so-called MySpace "sheriff" Hemanshu Nigam at the Tech Policy Summit today.
Paraphrased, condensed and selectively mashed-up notes after the jump....
Larry Magid: When looking for a sheriff, look no further than someone with the big and mean combined experience of Microsoft, MPAA and the Justice Department. Thus, Hemanshu Migam.
LM: Some would accuse you of making money at the expense of child safety.
HM: Advertisers won't advertise in a space that might not be reputable. This is a huge issue that we take very seriously. We want to give our advertisers great comfort.
LM: MySpace has many competitors. Is there potential that you might drive folks away if you become too sanitized?
HM: Safety is something that our users want. You don't go to the mall and announce that you want to be mugged.
LM: I was shocked by the provocative nature of photos on MySpace.
HM: It's up to the parents to determine what is right for their kids.
But, we need to educate teens the impact of what they do online and the potential future impact on their lives.
LM: Does the parent have an inaliable right to view what their child is doing online?
HM: We have a software that will come out in the summer that will allow parents to know if their kids are on MySpace and what age they say that they are and their username.
We need to talk to our kids about online safety just like we talk to them about the dangers of drugs or putting their seatbelt on.
LM: As you are painfully aware, there are Ags that want to ban MySpace for those to ban it under 16-years.
HM: Teens have entered lifestyle convergence. They don't distinguish between the online and offline worlds. In high school, 15-year-olds interact with 17-year-olds on a constant basis. Suddenly, we are going to ban kids from doing things that they can do in the offline world?
Kids might go to places that are unmonitored.
We are trying to protect against inappropriate content, access to undesirable content and preventing the under-14s from accessing.
LM: What about what the kids are producing, as opposed to what they are seeing?
HM: This raises what is core in how teens are being raised today. There are only two states that provide internet safety classes in the country (Calif and Virginia). That's wrong.
We need to treat online safety like we treat basic safety in classes like wood shop.
LM: What about DOPA, which I call the deleting online teenagers act... What about your alternative legislation?
HM: We want email registration legislation for sex offenders. There are more than 50 sex offender registries and we are working to combine them to ensure that they can't sign-on to MySpace. What is missing is an enforcement provision.
LM: On the issue of predators, the odds of an attack actually happening is incredibly low. If we put all of our efforts into preventing the handful of tragic cases, might it distract us from the bigger picture of educating parents?
HM: It's no different online than on the physical world. Education is critical.
We should not competing with other social networking services on safety, either.
LM: We are going to see growth in mobile social networking. What safety procedures are you going to put in there?
HM: We struck a deal with Cingular here to extend the Web experience to the phone. When we do this, we think very seriously about the safety of our users.
Audience Q: Isn't your sex offender registration legislation a PR stunt because any sex offender can create any number of multiple email addresses?
HM: We think a 10 year penalty if they are found out using email that was not registered will deter them.
What a great question from the audience at the end. The e-mail registration sounds a bit far-fetched to me too. I was at the conference and Mr. Nigam is obviously a smart, thoughtful guy, but I just don't buy the e-mail registration for sex offenders
(And, I should note that not knowing anything about this policy clearly isn't stopping me from expressing my opinion, something that I could say also applied to some of the panelists today...names shan't be mentioned.)
Posted by: John Earnhardt | February 27, 2007 at 11:14 PM
This is a good,common sense article.Very helpful to one who is just finding the resouces about this part.It will certainly help educate me
Posted by: Microsoft Office 2007 | October 27, 2010 at 07:15 PM