Myspace and several dating sites have reported predators going after members and the media is doing it’s job scaring consumers into being more careful.
Background check companies have been around for years. Profile enhancement and authentication companies, click-to-call and photo services as well. Honesty Online will even send someone to your house to take blood samples, photos and perform a background check. Good intentions, small market, a service that doesn’t scale well.
I see Myspace buying an online safety company at some point. Hiring drones to scan profiles for 56 million people is ridiculous. Background checks obviously won’t work for Myspace like they would work for dating sites. Better to hack together some artificial intelligence and use a skin-finder like Riya. Call it Your Mother, as in, would your mother let you go out looking like that?
The business case dictates that removing the opportunity to be a voyeur and freely view R-rated content on social networking would result in a huge drop-off in popularity, hence less advertising. At this point there are several other social networking sites swooping down to fill in the gaps left by MySpace and Friendster, expect a mass exodus at some point as the buzz moves on to the Next Big Thing.
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Its going to be difficult to create an AI system or higher people to background check all the users like you say. I think they have to seriously look into educationing their users about what to do if they come across inappropriate things. I know I have cybertipline.com bookmarked and have told my friends about it just in case they stumble across anything. All the focus is on the dangers, without many solutions being discussed so this is at least a good start.