Rated TV-PG for Sexual References. Mild Language. Reality.
You know children are becoming too sexual and too easily manipulated when MySpace has to start taking underhanded action to protect the little ones, but give the others an extra level of privacy which I don’t appreciate… All right, let’s face it– children have always been easily manipulated, so I guess it makes sense. I will just be irritated when half the profiles I attempt to view on MySpace are hidden.
Some of you may not know that I’m a moderator on MySpace, so I get to know about things a little bit in advance, and a little more in detail than what is told to you. So when I found out about this, I know it’s a good idea to protect users, but I also think that it will be abused. I honestly can not see any benefits to this. You post things on the Internet, and how can you expect them to be private? Better yet, why would you want them to be private? Why would you think that by making your page private, someone that wants to see ‘inside your friend world’ would not make another page just to add you as a friend? You think that if someone really wanted to see what was going on, that would stop them? So who are you hiding from? Freaks? Or the people who just want to check out your page and see if you’d be a good friend?
My rant may not make sense to some. I just have always seen the Internet as the place you go to to find out more about things, including people. About their lives, everything.
Did you know employers are using MySpace to see if their potential candidate for that empty spot in their office is a bad one? If they have a habit of doing drugs? If they’re a swinger? Does this make it a good reason to hide your profile? Perhaps… or maybe it’s a valid reason to keep what should be kept private, private, and only tell it to those you trust in the first place. Why post all the things nearest and dearest to you, in a place called MySpace, on a website accessed by more people on the planet than any other site, aside from search engines?
There is a line between sharing things with people that could be friends, and sharing things that you should only share with people you know are your friends. As for anyone under the age of 18 (17 in some states, such as the case is here in Texas, for true legal consent), think about what you are posting online. There are freaks everywhere, and there is no better breeding place for those freaks than on the Internet. You always think, “That could never happen to me”, but… it has to happen to someone. Just be more careful with what you put online, and make your space a public space that everyone can enjoy.
I wish MySpace didn’t have to come to implementing the feature depicted below. [More information on what led up to this can be read by a $30 mil. lawsuit - added 6/23 @ 9:50AM]
