2 March 2012 A Message to the “First Responders” in Gay Kids’ Lives: Why We Need to Ditch the Politics of Blame, Stop Talking About “Cyberbullying,” and Move Toward Sharing Responsibility for the Loss of Tyler Clementi By Mary L. GrayCross posted on HuffingtonPost; maryLgray.org; Cultural Digitally Senior Researcher Microsoft Research New England, Cambridge, MAAssociate Professor of …
Is blocking pro-ED content the right way to solve eating disorders?
Warning: This post deals with eating disorder and self-harm content and is potentially triggering. Following up on Tarleton's terrific post on moderating Facebook comes Tumblr's announcement that it will no longer allow pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) or pro-self-harm blogs on the site. Active Promotion of Self-Harm. Don’t post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or …
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Stop the Cycle of Bullying
[John Palfrey and I originally wrote this as an op-ed for the Huffington Post. See HuffPo for more comments.] On 22 September 2010, the wallet of Tyler Clementi - a gay freshman at Rutgers University - was found on the George Washington Bridge; his body was found in the Hudson River the following week. His …
The dirty job of keeping Facebook clean
Last week, Gawker received a curious document. Turned over by an aggrieved worker from the online freelance employment site oDesk, the document iterated, over the course of several pages and in unsettling detail, exactly what kinds of content should be deleted from the social networking site that had outsourced its content moderation to oDesk's team. …
What the GPS Device on Antoine Jones’ Jeep Cherokee Means for Internet Privacy
Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled on United States vs. Jones [PDF of court opinion], a case in which the FBI/DC police placed a GPS tracking device on the Jeep Cherokee of Antoine Jones, a club owner in DC who was suspected of dealing cocaine. The cops tracked Mr. Jones for 28 days, and, based on …
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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 …
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Two kinds of piracy
Just a quick follow up on the discussion of SOPA; people keep asking me what kind of legislation would be more appropriate than SOPA and PIPA, and that might have a better chance of gaining the support of the technology industries, users, and Congress. I'm not in the business of writing laws, but as a …
SOPA and the strategy of forced invisibility
Since I supported the blacking out of the MSR Social Media Collective blog to which I sometimes contribute, and the blacking out of Culture Digitally, which I co-organize, in order to join the SOPA protest led by the "Stop American Censorship" effort, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit, and Wikipedia, I though I should weigh in …
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Are Internet companies using us to fight against SOPA?
Like many of my colleagues I oppose to SOPA and PIPA. I have been a proponent of Free Culture for many years (which I know is funny to say next to the Microsoft logo) and I have studied young people's perceptions of intellectual property because I find the topic fascinating and extremely important. However, there …
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What’s the difference between SOPA and PIPA?
I decided to put my slightly-dormant internet policy research skillz to work to figure this out. It was surprisingly difficult. Most stop PIPA/SOPA websites conflate them-- but they are different. (Note: The best resource was an article I found at Area 51 Technologies.) #1: SOPA's a House bill, PIPA is a Senate bill. SOPA = …
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Social Media Collective 