Standards and Grudges

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Some girls got into a fight. One parent watched, someone video taped it and then put it on the internet. It’s not an altogether interesting story, but the media is desperate to make it sensational. The video was posted on Myspace and if you’ve been paying attention to the news this past year, the media loves to blame Myspace for a lot of things, like sexual predators.

Myspace is what the user makes of it. If they want to have contact with strangers, it’s up to the user. Myspace doesn’t compel users to talk to strangers or meet them in real life. Users must make that choice and in the case of minors, parents need to be involved. Of course many parents choose to be uninvolved and expect everyone else to monitor their children. It shouldn’t be the business of Myspace to police how users interact. And Myspace can’t control all content without sacrificing usability. Imagine if any change you make to a website you control won’t go into effect until approved by some company moderator. For everyone that users Blogger/Blogspot, it’s easy to imagine. When you write a post, it appears when you choose to publish it. Would you continue to user Blogger/Blogspot if it took days for posts be be approved? I doubt it.

Here’s the funny thing about how the media is reporting the fight. They want to lay blame on Myspace for providing a service that can be used to distribute the video, but the media themselves are distributing images of the fight. They even impose their station logo onto the image. Kettle calling the pot black?

And what’s the deal with “school officials are also investigating”? It’s not the purpose of schools to investigate or punish children for what they do off of school property.