MySpace Involved in Teenage Party Riot

News.com Has a story of the wild party in Melbourne last night 8th Jan 2009 where someone at the party advertised on My Space for 100 boys and 100 girls to attend the party(News,com, 2009) The article goes on to say that MySpace Australia's Director of Safety David Batch condemned anyone using the site to incite unsocial behaviour.

The question is because the person had advertised the party on MySpace does the Mr Batch hold some responsibility himself to allow this to happen.  Well I do not think so as this will create a hole new set of rule for content providers. How do they maintain their service is they have to monitor ever text submitted to MySpace.  I have some experience with this with my son who had a person write defamatory remarks about my son on MySpace and linked it to all his friends. As I was on his friends list then I cot a message to view the rubbish he had written. MySpace acceptable use policy forbid this behaviour and a quick email to MySpace and his account was deleted and blocked. 

 

But when it comes to this party by the time any one may have pointed it out to MySpace the damage was already done. Some of these kids could have networks of 100's of teenagers though many schools in Melbourne and a few line of text and the whole network would be informed. To explain one teen goes to school A and has 60 class mates on his list plus relations and social friends that could count to over 100 contacts of those 100 contacts the teens each 30 or more unique contacts threat the first teen had and then the message spreads like a virus around Melbourne. Lets consider that 200 teens attended the party then there could have been 1000's notified of this event within minutes.

If the police could identify the person who created the text then that person should be held responsible for their actions. As the Internet is a major part of a teens life these days education is the only method is the only practical way of avoiding this type of incident again.

Social network sites could become a part of the education of teens by providing safety information to schools about the risks involved in social networking and how to avoid them.

news.com,2009,MySpace warns users after wild party,viewed 9 January 2009, from http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24891032-5014239,00.html?from=public_rss