Entries from March 2008 ↓

The AP is reporting today on a recent Facebook security flaw that allows private photos to be accessed by unauthorized viewers via a simple URL edit. Coming just days after Facebook’s recent security upgrades, this incident highlights the fact that social networking sites are not always as secure as users would like them to be. This is especially important to note as more and more people are sharing their personal information on the internet.

In this recent security lapse, a computer technician from Canada uncovered a loop hole in the Facebook privacy protections. This allowed him to see pictures of people he did now know and who had not authorized him to view their private accounts. The breach was so glaring that the AP, in the course of their investigation, was able to utilize the same methods and view a 2005 personal photo album of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

There is no way to quantify at this time what impact this breach will have or how many users have been affected. Facebook has stated that it has since fixed  the problem and maintains strong privacy controls for their social networking site. 

The San Francisco Chronicle has a hard-hitting piece by Debra J. Saunders that takes the college gossip site Juicycampus.com to task for engendering an environment full of anonymous, damaging speech. Juicycampus has come under fire recently by blogs and the MSM who find nothing redeemable in a site that regularly features “crude language, ethnic slurs and graphic descriptions of probably fictitious sexual encounters.”

The site, which was started by a Duke graduate last August, has spread to over 50 college campuses and has been described by some as encouraging users to anonymously dish digital dirt about their classmates and professors. Some colleges have requested the site be banned and other campuses have issued letters and articles urging the student body to ignore the site altogether.

With tones ranging from silly to nasty, the site takes advantage of an outdated piece of legislation to keep the gossip flowing. The Communications Decency Act, crafted in the early days of the internet, made a gaping hole in digital case law and leaves no one accountable for libelous or defamatory online language. With no one responsible for the incendiary posts, the anonymous culture of internet hate has grown unabated over the past decade. Not the site owners nor the anonymous posters have any claim to the libelous and reputation damaging  content on a given URL. Juicycampus prominently proclaims the anonymous nature of their forums and Saunders calls out their faulty reasoning. Quoting from the piece:

“There is no way for someone using the site to find out who you are,” the site assures users. You can smear others falsely without fear that your true identity will be known . . . Bloggers can point to America’s history of anonymous political pamphleteering as precedent for the free speech rights of anonymous words. But Thomas Paine risked execution or jail if his authorship of “Common Sense” had been known – and he did so for principles in which he believed. Not for trash.

ReputationDefender supports free and anonymous speech and responsible online discourse. It should be noted that neither defamation or libel are covered by the First Amendment and never have been. Spreading lies or rumors does real harm to real people and character assassination is one of the unintended consequences of the digital revolution. Educating students about the negative effects of their online behavior is the first step to stemming the tide of online hate speech. ReputationDefender strongly supports the First Amendment and stands opposed, along with our Constitution, to false and intentionally malicious speech.

Lori Aratani has a great article in the Washington Post that documents the recent Facebook trend of parents setting up profiles and sending friend requests to their children. The piece received coverage on a number of popular blogs and was dugg over 1,000 times over last weekend, highlighting new concerns over teenage privacy and online parenting. Quoting from the page:

More and more moms and dads are signing onto Facebook to keep up with their offspring. Not only are they friending (or attempting to friend) their sons and daughters, they’re friending their sons’ and daughters’ friends.

Faced with parental profiles, students have several online options: ignore, accept, or grant limited access to their online life. Reactions from students have been mixed, but most feel that parental pokes are an invasion of their privacy. Having mom and dad on Facebook is like “ ‘having them walk into my room’ ” said a 17 year old high school student quoted in the piece. Anti-Parent Facebook groups have even sprung up, with heated comments about virtual progenitors. Most see Social Networking as the domain of the young and view bosses, teachers and parents as an unwelcome intrusion that limit their self-expression.

Others, though, are not concerned with their rents getting digital and have welcomed them as virtual friends. It is important for parents and students to communicate, online and off, and for both groups to set up ground rules for acceptable online behavior. And, as the article mentions, parents should be aware of the privacy function of Facebook; your kid may approve your friend request, but that doesn’t mean you are seeing the whole story.

Evan Thomas has an insightful piece at Newsweek that compares anonymous online gossip to the Communist Red Scare of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The article’s main focus is JuicyCampus, a gossip site devoted to cataloguing the “juice,” or rumors, at college campuses across America. So where does McCarthy come in?

Part of McCarthy’s twisted brilliance was his ability to manipulate mass media to malign the character of his enemies. According to Richard Rovere, “[McCarthy] invented the morning press conference called for the purpose of announcing an afternoon press conference.” The Wisconsin Senator was able to claim that he had proof that his opponents were Communist Sympathizers and the press ate it up and gave Joe free ink. In the end, though, the “charges were bogus, but the denials and refutations never quite caught up with the initial banner headlines.”

Similarly, anonymous online gossiping sites are, according to Thomas, calling out malicious buzzwords and gaining eyeballs in order to trash reputations and increase page views (some posts have received over 10,000 views on JuicyCampus). And because of the nature of this site, individuals are guilty until proven innocent and rebuttals are often lost beneath all of the “juice.”

Thomas readily admits that his analogy fails on a number of levels; “Unlike McCarthy, who craved publicity, the modern-day campus blowhards thrive on anonymity.” Indeed, it is the anonymous component of speech that so often leads to malicious and incendiary speech. Another key difference between modern character smearing and the Red Scare of last century is the status of those impugned. Targets at sites like JuicyCampus are not Government Officials or members of the Hollywood elite, but instead are everyday students, working toward their degrees. As we mentioned in an earlier post, it seems that one consequence of internet growth is the decay of privacy and notions of private internet lives.

What do you think? Are gossip sites harmless fun and meaningless distractions or is there something base and innately cruel to their business model?