MySpace Announces New Safety Restrictions
As E-Commerce Law predicted in April, social networking site MySpace has announced new restrictions designed to protect younger users. This week, a 14-year old girl sued MySpace and News Corporation, alleging that she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year old man she met on the site. Now, MySpace is implementing new restrictions on how adults may contact young teenage users of the site.
The changes, which MySpace says are unrelated to recent events, were announced today. According to the Washington Post:
"MySpace users 18 and older will no longer be able to request to join a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they know the youth's e-mail address or full name.
Any user will still be able to view partial profiles of younger users by searching for other attributes, such as display name. The difference is that currently, adults can then request to be added to a youth's list to view the full profile; that option will disappear for users 18 and older."
Though the new restrictions may sound convincing, they aren’t particularly effective. MySpace makes no effort to verify the age of its users, so a 13 or 14-year old can still set their age to 16 or 17 in their MySpace profile and bypass the new restrictions. According to a statement by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (quoted in this AP article):
"There is far less than meets the eye in these newly announced MySpace measures. These steps are inadequate because they lack any age verification and leave the minimum age too low."
For more information on the new MySpace safety restrictions, see MySpace to Add Restrictions to Protect Younger Teenagers on nytimes.com; MySpace Plans Adult Restrictions to Protect Teen Users on washingtonpost.com; MySpace to Develop New Restrictions for Young Users on E-Commerce Times; and MySpace Plans New Age Restrictions on WTOP News.
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