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Facebook: Instinct and a Mild Obsession |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Bidness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 08 May 2008 |
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In my line of work, you have to trust your instincts. I've been out of
the espionage game for a while now, but back during the Cold War, the
only way to navigate a world of moles, agents and double agents was to
go with your gut. To ignore your instincts was to risk a bullet to the
abdomen. On the rain-soaked, midnight streets of Prague. As the
voluptuous Russian assassin coldly lets down her hair and lights a
cigarette…
Oops, getting a little carried away there. Anyway, it's equally important to trust your instincts when you're practicing hard-nosed consumer advocacy journalism in the digital age. When I was deep in the trenches, stringing for trade magazines in the late 1990s and early Oughts, the Internet's next "killer app" was being prophesied every other day. Now that 99 percent of those dotcom fever dreams have died, it's interesting to see that my instincts almost always proved right. I remember admiring the simplicity of Google, or the elegance of iTunes, and thinking -- these are the guys that are going to make it.
 I mention all this because I have a similar feeling about the abiding modern phenomenon that is Facebook. I'm a little bit obsessed about it, actually. Part of the larger market area referred to as "social networking sites," Facebook continues to pace the field, and is currently Obama to MySpace's Hillary in the race for Cool Quotient .
News has come down the pike today that Facebook will add about 40 safeguards to the system designed to guard against sexual predators and "cyberbullies." Significantly, the announcement was made not by the Facebook people, but by attorneys general from 49 states and the District of Columbia. (Texas is the lone holdout, for some reason.)
Safeguards include banning convicted sex offenders from the system and limiting users' ability to search for subscribers under 18 years of age. Some of the other changes, as reported by CNN.com:
- Ensure companies offering services on its site comply with its safety and privacy guidelines.
- Keep tobacco and alcohol ads from users too young to purchase those products.
- Remove groups whose comments or images suggest they involve incest, pedophilia, bullying or other inappropriate content.
- Send warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an adult.
- Review users' profiles when they ask to change their age, ensuring the update is legitimate and not intended to let adults masquerade as children.
Smart moves, all of them. But perhaps smartest of all was the decision to make the announcement via the state AGs. By allying itself so conspicuously with law enforcement, Facebook sends the message that it's serious about protecting users, especially kids. Also, crafting policy with the AGs upfront means not having to worry about fighting the same AGs down the line. (Online consumer issues are almost always handled at the state level, and the federal government only gets involved when it has to.)
Facebook is maneuvering with relative grace and dexterity while maintaining explosive growth. It's fun to watch. And those guys aren't even paying me to say so. Although I am, as always, open to any and all corporate graft -- I didn't get a degree in Situational Ethics for nothing.
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