|
Great article -- thanks for posting. It points out a problem with the Wild Wild Web. If you give people the ability to do whatever they want, they're going to do some things that you won't like.
Yahoo has allowed user-created chat rooms for a long time, and their policy appears to have been mostly "hands-off" -- whatever you do is your own business, not ours. That policy suggests that Yahoo is not responsible for the words of the people who use their system (which I would have to agree with). The problem comes when there is illegal activity occuring in plain view, and nothing is apparently done to stop it.
Legal issues on the Internet are complicated by the global nature of the net. What's legal in one country might be illegal in another.
Yahoo's inaction on this issue could be interpreted by some as implied support. Not support for heinous acts against children, of course, but support for open and free speech, even where that speech goes places where people are offended or worse.
And then there are the advertisements. Yahoo is in business to make money. They put ads on their site, including pages that host chat rooms -- even user-created chat rooms. Naturally an advertiser will be concerned when their company's ads appear on a chat room discussing sex with children or God-knows what else.
I think the responsible thing to do is to watch user-created chat rooms, and allow other users to post abuse reports when they run across a room that delves into questionable territory. And ads that appear in user-created channels should not be permitted, or at least limited to internal Yahoo promotions.
For now, they havent' eliminated user-created chat rooms -- they've just removed them from the pulbic directory. This is a very good start, but it's a bit like sweeping the dust under the carpet.
|