MySpace responds to states' request for sex offender data
MySpace responded Tuesday afternoon to >the letter sent by eight states' attorneys general Monday requesting the popular social networking site to turn over data pertaining to registered sex offenders who have profiles on the site.
Context & Ripple Effects
MySpace answered on Tuesday a letter sent the day before by attorneys general from eight states demanding data on registered sex offenders holding profiles on the site — and the New York Times picked up the story the same day, reporting details of MySpace's plan to reveal known offenders, which signals this has moved beyond a single-outlet item into a national story.
The request lands on a company already managing several fronts at once: News Corp's property confirmed a pending $250-$300 million acquisition of Photobucket just last week, began tightening which third-party widgets users may embed in March 2007, and is preparing ad-customization and news-aggregation launches for Q2. A coordinated multi-state demand over user safety adds a legal dimension to what had been product and deal-making pressure.
First-order effects
- MySpace must hand state attorneys general data identifying registered sex offenders among its profile holders, converting a private user database into evidence for state enforcement.
- The eight attorneys general who signed Monday's letter obtain their first direct readout of how many known offenders operate on the country's largest social network.
Second-order effects
- MySpace's compliance gives the same state coalition a working template to demand equivalent disclosures from any rival network, making cooperation rather than refusal the default posture for the whole category.
- The company's pending Photobucket acquisition and its advertising ambitions now proceed against a public record of state-level scrutiny over who is on the platform, raising the cost of any future safety lapse.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, social networking shifts from a self-policed medium to one where platforms are legally expected to screen members against government registries — a precedent that would define user-safety obligations for every large consumer service that follows.
The trend: Social networks are being pushed by state attorneys general from self-policing toward legally compelled screening of users against official registries.