safety

January 23, 2012

How Parents Normalized Teen Password Sharing

In 2005, I started asking teenagers about their password habits. My original set of questions focused on teens’ attitudes about giving their password to their parents, but I quickly became enamored with teens’ stories of sharing passwords with friends and significant others. So I was ecstatic when Pew Internet & American Life Project decided to survey teens about their password sharing habits.

danah boyd, teens, young, privacy, online, trust, safety

September 23, 2011

The Unintended Consequences of Cyberbullying Rhetoric

We all know that teen bullying – both online and offline – has devastating consequences. Jamey Rodemeyer’s suicide is a tragedy. He was tormented for being gay. He knew he was being bullied and he regularly talked about the fact that he was being bullied.

danah boyd, online, cyber bullying, safety, young, teens, social behaviour

August 5, 2011

“Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power

Everyone’s abuzz with the “nymwars,” mostly in response to Google Plus’ decision to enforce its “real names” policy. At first, Google Plus went on a deleting spree, killing off accounts that violated its policy. When the community reacted with outrage, Google Plus leaders tried to calm the anger by detailing their “new and improved” mechanism to enforce “real names” (without killing off accounts).

danah boyd, social media, identity, online identity, privacy, safety

February 25, 2011

How To Be Safe and Social: ASA and CAP Guidelines for Social Media

Guest Post by: Dan Harris

Yesterday I attended the Internet Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) How to be Safe and Social event.

Of particular interest was the presentation by Malcolm Phillips, the Code Policy Manager at the Committee for Advertising Practice (CAP), on updating the digital remit of the CAP code and the new Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) guidelines for online advertising that come into effect from 1 March 2011.

Dan Harris, social media, safety, social media marketing, regulations

September 27, 2010

The Dark Side of Facebook Places? Nobody Is Making You Use It.

People will be bored of what you are doing. By knowing more about you they may like you less. You are advertising when your house is empty to rob. And you are making it easy for paeodophiles to track you down. These are the charges leveled against Facebook Places in a piece in this weekend’s Sunday Times (no article link I’m afraid – behind the paywall!).

Matt Rhodes, Facebook Places, Facebook, social media use, privacy, safety

September 7, 2010

How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers, and Other Abusive Scumbags

[Originally posted at Huffington Post]

For the last 12 years, I’ve dedicated immense amounts of time, money, and energy to end violence against women and children. As a victim of violence myself, I’m deeply committed to destroying any institution or individual leveraging the sex-power matrix that results in child trafficking, nonconsensual prostitution, domestic violence, and other abuses. If I believed that censoring Craigslist would achieve these goals, I’d be the first in line to watch them fall.

danah boyd, safety, Internet, online behaviour, teens, young, censorship, freedom of information, predators, Craiglist

June 18, 2010

Four Essays Addressing Risky Behaviors and Online Safety

At Harvard’s Berkman Center, John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, and I have been co-directing the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative to investigate the role that policy can play in addressing core issues involving youth and media. John has been leading up the Privacy, Publicity, and Reputation track; Urs has been managing Youth Created Content and Information Quality track; and I have been coordinating the Risky Behaviors and Online Safety track.

young, safety, online behaviour, danah boyd

August 1, 2009

Help Me Find Innovative Practitioners Who Address Online Safety Issues

I need your help. One of our central conclusions in the Internet Safety Technical Task Force Report was that many of the online safety issues require the collective engagement of a whole variety of different groups, including educators, social workers, psychologists, mental health experts, law enforcement, etc. Through my work on online safety, I've met a lot of consultants, activists, and online safety experts. Through my work as a researcher, I've met a lot of practitioners who are trying to engage youth about these issues through outright fear that isn't grounded in anything other than myth.

safety, online, danah boyd

February 8, 2009

Doing the Math on MySpace and Registered Sex Offenders

by: danah boyd

The Attorneys General - mostly angry at me and other researchers - have spent considerable time trying to publicly reject the ISTTF report that was published last month. This week, I watched as they blasted the airwaves with an announcement that 90,000 sex offenders have been removed from MySpace. This PR campaign is intended to provoke fears in the American psyche, to serve as "proof" that we were wrong.