In October 2012, British Columbia teen Amanda Todd ended her life after suffering intolerable bullying triggered by a sexual predator who found and blackmailed her through Facebook. Millions were outraged. We were too. We are social media enthusiasts who care deeply about protecting vulnerable young users in the cyber woods from the predators out to get them.
The benefits of social media in connecting users worldwide are well known, and we ourselves have cheered the democratization of knowledge and information sharing. However, the proliferations of SM access to an increasingly younger demographic is most worrisome.
Our concern is with young SM users, the estimated 200 million under-17 users of Facebook and similar sites. Amanda Todd’s call for help burns our senses and we shout a cry. And a challenge.
We cry Foul, that SM providers still enable predators to easily find young victims online. We challenge social media businesses, multi-billion dollar operations, to show some heart. We challenge Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and all such SM companies to soul searching. And real action.
From the start, these free services lacked transparency. We found out after the fact that we were being “data mined,” our personal information and online history made available to advertisers to strategically target us with customized ads. We submitted to lengthy “Terms of Use” agreements that most people don’t read.
Let’s face it, we’ve been had, seduced by the world at our fingertips. Now we know better, that the dance was not free, the costs have been considerable.
As shocking as Amanda’s story was, there is still much cause for worry. Known security gaps in a proliferating host of mobile applications have converted mainstream SM sites into highly effective devices for predators and abusive bullies.
A YouTube channel, The Daily Capper, openly celebrates and promotes sexual blackmailing of young girls, fueling traffic to a dark web of under-age sex sites. Omegle, a Facebook-connected site, enables anyone (including kids) to “Talk to Strangers” via video or text. These are extremely dangerous conditions that leave children in harm’s way.
Instagram, a photo-sharing program owned by Facebook, can easily be accessed by young children via smartphones, who can inadvertently publish their home addresses, phone numbers, and even physical locations. Thousands of babysitter images of young children have been uploaded, many with locations identified. Facebook has become a brand feared by parents, when it could be one they can trust.
Educating parents and kids – teaching “net smart” habits – is very important, yet insufficient protection for the young. Some parents do teach responsible SM habits and may engage various parental controls. But the task of monitoring and adjusting children’s online behavior, even at home, is beyond the ability of most parents. Parents simply can’t police their kids effectively.
SM makes the challenge of parenting that much harder: kids now live in two worlds, real and virtual, and they often behave like they don’t know the difference. Many seem to not understand the need to keep private matters private. They don’t realize that on SM comments and photos shared may stay online forever. The proximate real world of a few friends, relations and colleagues gives way to hundreds of online “friends” whose text and image sharing can immeasurably amplify these interactions.
Clearly, there is a security gap for young online users, a gap that is best addressed by those businesses that profit from offering SM services. They created the risk for young users. It is their corporate responsibility to build young user safety into all applications as a mandatory design requirement.
Our BC community is building a grassroots movement to urge industry reform and consumer protection. We have launched Red Hood Project, onFacebook and Twitter, to rally public demand for systemic safety changes in the SM industry. We invite everyone to join us. An Open Letter to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was posted on numerous news sites. We await her reply.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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