MySpace erases 29,000 sex offenders
MySpace yesterday announced it had "detected and deleted" 29,000 convicted sex offenders on the social networking site, Reuters reports. — The figure is considerably higher than the 7,000 it said it had identified back in May, after coming under strong pressure …
Context & Ripple Effects
MySpace had already made user safety an operational issue, including hiring an official to oversee user safety in 2006. In May 2007, it also responded to eight states’ request for sex-offender profile data, putting its screening practices under direct scrutiny.
The much larger tally turns that earlier disclosure into evidence that enforcement is a continuing moderation function rather than a one-time response to officials.
First-order effects
- MySpace removes 29,000 identified convicted sex offenders, sharply expanding the scale of enforcement from the 7,000 profiles it had disclosed in May.
- The eight state attorneys general pressing MySpace for data gain a clearer basis to assess whether the company’s identification and removal process is adequate.
Second-order effects
- Other social-network operators face stronger pressure to demonstrate comparable screening and cooperation when state officials ask for offender-profile data.
- MySpace must treat safety staffing and account-review processes as core platform operations alongside its efforts to expand video and social features.
Third-order effects
- If state requests produce similarly large disclosures elsewhere, social networks will be judged not only on privacy promises but on their capacity to identify and remove harmful users at scale.
The trend: Large social networks are moving toward more formalized trust-and-safety governance as regulators demand evidence of how user-risk policies are enforced.