But people of all ages should know that myspace.com was bought by Rupert Murdoch—the man who also brings you the Fox News Channel—last year for $580 million. And reports have it that last week more than 200,000 “objectionable” profiles were deleted in an effort to quell the rising fear of the innocence police. “Objectionable” encompasses pages that are too risque or that have hate speech on them. Funny side note: They apparently didn’t get to myspace.com/fuckrupertmurdoch.
Some folks are calling myspace the Trojan horse of online censorship. Tens of millions of people use the service, and because it’s a privately owned space, someone gets to decide what is said and what isn’t.
Though users probably don’t rely on the site for news, I’d be willing to bet that more people, specifically more youngish people, check their myspace page more often than they visit their local paper’s website or head to nytimes.com. Unfortunately, ol’ Rupert ultimately has the say in what appears there and what doesn’t. Sounds like there’s a witch hunt here waiting to happen.
Here’s a thought: Wouldn’t it be super cool if there were a myspace-like place, free to the people, operated in the same way open-source software functions? I know. I’m thinking like a commie, but imagine a social network not owned by anyone that could be improved upon by anyone. I hope I see the day.
