IP Democracy: The Web is a Scary Place

Two articles today underscore the sometimes scary nature of the Internet. The first is a surprisingly long USA Today re-hash of the debate that cropped up earlier this year regarding the ubiquity of hateful, threatening or rude comments and web posts. My favorite part is this made-for-soundbite quote from Paul Saffo: “The information superhighway has become the mean streets of cyburbia.”

My second favorite part: Tim O’Reilly, who caused a firestorm by suggesting that bloggers abide by a code of ethics, is now working on a technology that enables readers to participate in moderating comments. O’Reilly spokeswoman Sara Winge spoke some very true words when she said “We think that’s more likely to get widely adopted than a written code that requires agreement from bloggers.”

The other scary article comes from The Washington Post’s Sam Diaz, who profiles the efforts by law enforcement authorities and private groups to patrol social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in an effort to weed out child predators.

That’s not the really scary part. What’s kind of upsetting is the amount of personal detail (including first names, photos and cell phone numbers) that teens post about themselves on these sites.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 31, 2007 11:29 AM to IP Democracy