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Do Social Network Regulations Make Sense?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on June 5th, 2008 3:40 PM

Sarah Perez has started a great conversation about whether or not social network should be regulated. I’m excited to see the conversation at least started as I have mentioned this before. Sarah quotes an article in today’s Guardian which states that, “Nine out of 10 people think there should be tighter regulation of information on social networking websites” and “89% of those surveyed by the Press Complaints Commission said there should be a set of widely accepted rules to help prevent personal information - such as private photographs - being abused.”

The bottom line is that people believe there should be regulations but in this country at least, very little regulation (if any) has been focused on social networks aside from privacy policies and the creation of policies to protect children. One of the most substantial problems is that people are not aware how their information is being used and how public it really is when they post it online.

Theoretically a similar argument could be made for just about any online service that doesn’t have bank-like security. Can you blame the ignorance of the user for information being publicly displayed? While there is legislation on the table in the European Union and there has been proposed legislation in the United States, nothing has happened so far.

With the recent breach of privacy of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan on MySpace being blamed on a failed Yahoo! API, the issue of user privacy and protection is back at the forefront. The question is: should there be laws that protect the users online when interacting with social networks?

Posted in Social Networking
  

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    Yes, I'm all for much tighter regulations and laws too. However, the challenge is enforcement. And all the expense and logistical components of that enforcement.

    I think most socnet users are blissfully unaware just how vulnerable their data could be. It really is caveat emptor - users ought to familiarize themselves with at least the basic terms of use and privacy settings.
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    @Mari - Re: Enforcement, wouldn't the obvious way to try and do it through the masses? Let people police themselves like we are trying to do with these communities today.

    As far as regulation, I think it could be helpful. Our community is financial services focused so our members main concern is security and privacy. We allow the information to flow freely but exposing their identity is entirely their choice.

    I think there is a way to protect the identity and data of the users along with allowing them to freely engage with other one, it just takes some debating. :)

    Another thought, Totspot seems to be doing some interesting stuff with identity protection as well for babies/kids.

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