Posted on 02/18/2006 7:47:14 AM PST by wagglebee
A website that encourages young people to post personal information about themselves and has been linked to a series of rapes and other crimes by sexual predators is wholly owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which also owns the Fox News Channel.
Murdoch sealed the deal for MySpace.com and its parent, Intermix Media, for $580 million in July. When the deal was announced, Murdoch said in a statement: "Intermix's brands, such as MySpace.com, are some of the Web's hottest properties and resonate with the same audiences that are most attracted to Fox's news, sports and entertainment offerings."
California Web entrepreneurs Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe founded MySpace.com two years ago after envisioning Net surfers having personal websites where they could upload photos and sound files easily, and disclose as much personal information as they wanted. At last count, over 55 million people had "space" on the site, including countless teenagers who use their pages to communicate their thoughts on everything from school to music to the opposite sex.
Law enforcement officials, however, believe teens are disclosing way too much information for their own good.
When young people post their cell-phone numbers, names of their schools and sexy photos of themselves (though MySpace says it prohibits pornographic pictures), they endanger themselves, stress authorities, who have investigated so-called "social websites" and linked them to crimes such as rape, molestation and even murder.
In Lafayette, La., last month a 16-year-old girl was attacked by a man who tracked her down at her after-school job. He had read details about her on MySpace.
In September, a 17-year-old freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University was murdered when information on MySpace allegedly led the killer to her.
Investigators looking into the murders of two other teenage girls, one in New Jersey and one in California, are trying to determine if information the two posted on MySpace helped the assailants.
In Middletown, Conn., police suspect that in the past two months, seven girls under 16 have been sexually assaulted by men they met on MySpace, USA Today reported. In most cases, the men who lured the girls said online they were younger than they really were.
The Connecticut attorney general's office is considering prosecuting MySpace for failing to protect young people – and that threat has gotten MySpace's attention. The company released a statement saying, "We share [the attorney general's] concerns about the safety and security of MySpace, and we will be working with him ... to make our safety practices and procedures even stronger and more effective."
Some members of MySpace, which has been described by law enforcement as "a buffet for a predator," are even younger than 13. The Rutland, Vt., Herald reports one MySpace profile highlights an elementary school student. It shows the 11-year-old provocatively posed on a bed. Her profile listed her age as 19, but she noted elsewhere on her page, "I'm actually 11 years old."
Another page shows a coquettish 11-and-a-half-year-old girl with hands cupping her breasts, staring into the camera. Friends comment with replies such as, "You're hot."
"Kids are not connecting what they're doing on the computer with real life," Parry Aftab, an online safety expert who has advised MySpace, told USA Today. "They do not believe they're accountable."
So how big is MySpace.com? It has become so popular it boasts two and a half times the traffic of Google. And of those 55 million members, one-quarter are registered as minors. MySpace's rival site, Friendster, has 24 million members.
"Just about every parent is aware of it and every kid is on it," website President Tom Anderson told the Boston Herald. "Some kind of reaction (is expected) as MySpace becomes part of the mainstream."
But oftentimes, parents are clueless about the fact their children have pages on MySpace. One mother told the Vermont paper: "I was shocked when I saw it. [My son's] girlfriend's friend wrote some very obscene things about him."
Besides the crime connection, teens across the nation have been suspended from school for threatening classmates on MySpace. Many schools also have policies against accessing MySpace pages from campus computers.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is one of the organizations urging parents to talk to their kids about the dangers of social websites. The organization says one in five children who use the Internet are solicited sexually.
Murdoch hailed the benefits of MySpace last year when he purchased the company.
Young people "don't want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what's important," Murdoch is quoted by BBC News as saying.
"And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel.
"Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle."
Some critics believe Murdoch's News Corp could become legally liable for some of the lives destroyed because of MySpace, perhaps coming in the form of a class-action suit.
MySpace released a statement to WorldNetDaily about measures it is taking to enhance the safety of users, especially teenagers.
The company says it prohibits those under 14 from becoming members – though due to the nature of the Internet, it is difficult to enforce such a rule. Also, MySpace says it limits access to pages of members under 16 to only those people they know.
The firm says it is dedicating one-third of its approximately 175-employee workforce to "policing and monitoring our site on a 24 hour, seven day-a-week basis to make sure our age requirements are met, and that inappropriate images are not posted to the site. The accounts of users who violate these policies are closed."
MySpace says it's "providing mechanisms so our users can report inappropriate content" to the site.
"Once we are alerted, we take prompt action that ranges from involving law enforcement officials to deleting a user from the system," the firm states.
"While MySpace continues to develop additional measures to enhance site safety," the statement says, "it is important to note that MySpace is a modern communication tool like a cell phone, e-mail or instant messenger. MySpace encourages all members to recognize the public nature of the Internet."
Radio talk-show host Jaz McKay of KNZR noted a pastor in Bakersfield, Calif., recently spent 30 hours online researching MySpace and came away with a binder full of documents and images – some of which were clearly pornographic, he says.
McKay believes authorities need to investigate the site for violations of child pornography laws.
Noting the hundreds of millions the company was sold for, McKay asked on his show yesterday: "With that kind of money, why don't they hire more people to monitor the site?"
Daniel Weiss of Focus on the Family Action says the bottom-line solution is for parents to come to grips with the dangers of the Net.
Said Weiss: "Parents need to understand that anytime they let their kid go online alone it's as if they allowed a stranger into their child's bedroom and the stranger closed the door."
I wasn't even shocked when I saw the pictures but her step mother who found them was profoundly shocked.
MySpace is a great place for people to post: Images, stories,
hopes and dreams, find new freinds from around the world.
Sure the Marxists want to damage and deface the site. It's
what they do, what they work so hard for.
Just keep the " Faith " they can't stand that.
MySpace has a problem with California public schools ~ they encourage kids to use it. Plus, this particular site has entirely too much space devoted to the glories of suicide.
I disagree.
I have two daughters who use this site and I can tell you that there is absolutely no doubt that bad people frequent that place trolling and that they alllow about all they can in the way of decadent behavior....especially yiung angst, dope talk, mutilation and young homoerotic indulging
I can keep them off it at home but not elsewhere if they wish to see it.
It's a problem that is blowback from technology that has yet to be resolved.
That said....it's not hard to see why kids like it.
Are you familiar with the site?
(father of four)
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what Rupert Murdoch's ownership of MySpace has to do with stupid teenagers posting more information there than they should.
If there are really 55 million users, then this is one of the most successful site on the internet. Individuals are responsible for what they post there, and parents should monitor their children's use of such sites, or bar them from using them.
Check what your child is doing on the internet, parents!
It's simple another bogeyman behind the tree in the cultural forest.
A parent's job is not longer just to raise children to behave and act responsibly and decently.
That has become almost secondary to constantly thwarting unbelievable cultural garbage that would have been unheard of 2-3 generations ago.
It's incredible when a 4 year old wants to know what "gay" really means and when nearly all TV cartoons instill backtalk and trashtalk.
It's very difficult.
Teen girls are told over and over to dress like trollops and to get multiple piercings and tattoos and that they must have 2-300 dollar jeans etc.
and drugs....
and sex...
abortion.
Raising children today tests one's mettle.
(and I love Murdoch btw)
To condemn the entire MySpace concept due to the abuse of a few is ridiculous.
Bump to that.
While I agree with you to a degree, I still maintain that too many parents would rather be their kids' best friends than to be disciplinarians. Kids need limits as much as they need food and shelter--they're kids, fer cryin' out loud, not adults who happen to be under 18. They need to be watched when they're on the computer, and it wouldn't hurt to limit cell phone usage either.
Nevertheless, I also realize that for some kids, no amount of "best efforts" will change them--but that doesn't mean the parents shouldn't at least give it a try.
In San Antonio this week, some fifteen year old girls skipped school to hook up with some guys they met on myspace. The girls were drugged and raped, then dumped off at their school in an incoherent state.
They are lucky they weren't murdered, and dumped under a bridge somewhere.
On the news they showed the dad of the 22 year old rapist, and he was defending his son's actions-yikes.
I'm an adult male. I don't know who it was but he seems to have "invited" a number of connected profiles to "add him" as a friend (adult men, adult women, and some "pets").
His primary profile pic was a color shot of his penis next to a ruler.
I complained twice to Myspace and it took them approx. 48 hours to get the picture deleted (but they let the account stand).
I told them that such lack of response will only continue to get them earned negative press. They never sent me any sort of communication back.
"it's just sex" is the mantra of the Sex Postive crowd.
They seek to remove all moral judgements over sexual pairings regardless of age, sex, relation, marital status, number, or species of partnet. They want everyone sexually active at every age.
To them abstinence is wrong because it is a denial of sexual desires, not because it doesn't work.
The homosexual agenda serves as the battering ram to an even larger agenda.
I don't find this to be a conscious objective of myspace but it has been snowballing in the culture for many decades.
Myspace has some of the raunchiest profiles I've ever seen. We looked at a few of them, because my bf's girls have profiles there. Mommy blew her brains out on meth, so there is no guidance. He yelled at them, but what good does that do?
For those who are not clueless and actually give a rat's ass about your kids, let me tell you something. You may have your computer locked down tight, monitor everything your kid does on YOUR computer, and set standards of behavior. Do you let your kid out of the house? Does your kid have friends with computers who might not be as well supervised as yours? Does your child's school have computer lab? There are internet cafes, libraries, and cell phone capabilities.
It really sucks trying to keep this stuff away from your kids.
Find me on MySpace and be my friend! This is a test run I just crated at MySpace.
MySpace does encourage you to put up a lot of personal information, with no warnings that everything you enter will be on display, including town, first name and school. I made up everything in case, but it was difficult finding out how to work the privacy controls.
Turns out that only users under 18(?) can set their entire profiles to "private". Under 14 is not allowed to use the site at all.
It is a singles networking site.
It is a very easy to use blog and diary site.
Teachers hate the site because kids make up fake "teacher" pages, but they could do that with any blog site.
How many of those people with "space" are parents who login to monitor what their kids and their kids' friends are posting? I'm one... who else?
I have a very good picture of the group surrounding my daughter based on what I see there, and frankly it's scary. Since social services won't let me lock my daughter in a closet until she's 18, I just have to be aware and make sure she's not posting too much information.
Food for thought, he may have a "shadow" account that you're unaware of. I found two such accounts for my daughter that she doesn't know I know about.
There were minors who tried to signup when the threshold was 18. Some would post elsewhere in their profile that they were younger.
It is harder for a 14 year old to pass for 18 than a 17 year old.
Funny thing is that I and many of my friends list our ages in the high 90s. We don't WANT to be trolled upon by random online daters. We use it to network with our friends and friends of friends we've met a few times.
I know a number of monogamous couples approaching 50 who are on there.
What I want to know is if ANY of this same behavior goes on at Friendster (I have a Friendster account but early on Myspace was more stable and had a couple better features).
Myspace gets dinged for behavior that exists on other sites and existed at Myspace prior to Murdoch's ownership. I am not a Murdoch defender (and the entertainment on Fox is often NOT respectful of or "conservative" in nature) but believe that some of this is misdirected rage.
I've tried to feed some conservative hosts, like Laura Ingraham, some additional details about the strengths and failings of Myspace (because she'll discuss it on her show at times). I don't know what if any of my comments have gotten through her staff.
It serves as a "topical" issue but the sell-out of major stores like JC Penney, Target, and Lord & Taylor to stocking slutwear (and promoting it as such) should have been a bigger story. And parents paid those shopping bills.
We meed more parents than parents trying to be "best friends" to their kids.
Heresy. You are supposed to be petitioning the government to ban things you don't like, especially anything POTENTIALLY to do with children, because parenting is hard. Do you honestly expect us professionally offended puritan malcontents to be willing to do anything for ourselves, other than bitch and complain about the government failing to become larger and more prohibitive?
Do you realize that you are contributing to the moral decay of society brought about by amoral secular hedonistic adults who use the internet to show skin, use harsh words, and do offensive things? We need morality welfare - for the motherland (and the children). You aren't truly free unless the government forces you to behave.
/sarcasm
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