Blame it on the Social Network?

I read this quote the other day and it really made me think:

“Teachers have become “fair game” for malicious comment online, and said that there is no reason why sites like Facebook should get legal immunity.”

Legal immunity? Legal immunity against what? What can they possibly be legally blamed for? Writing the code that has created the worlds largest online social network? (Oh MySpace where did you go?)

Can you really blame an entire social network for a single persons comment?

Surely not. Surely this is the mob mentality I was speaking about previously.

This sort of behaviour is akin to arresting Kim DotCom who set up Megaupload and that English guy who created tvlinks.co.uk. Ok, they facilitate other people doing something illegal – but don’t actually perform the illegal “acting”. Is it really fair to arrest them? All they want to do is make an example out of them. Guess what? It doesn’t work. I’m watching similar sites pop up every day performing the same function.

So those virtual pitch forks have now been turned on social networking sites like Facebook.

This is turning into yet another ugly SOPA-type episode again. In years to come people will forget what the first ammendmant even stood for. Surely posting your own comment, to your own friends and followers is no one elses business. Punishing an entire social networking giant for a single users comment is ridiculous. It’s like suing a car manufacturer for a second hand care salesman over-charging you.

It’s not their issue!

Facebook have procedures in place to deal with cyberbullying… and not only that, but for inappropriate imagery, inappropriate comments and a whole heap more. With 425 million active users – I wouldn’t expect anything less. With social networking all the content is user generated. You’re relying on the users to generate the content which brings other users to your site – Twitter, Tumblr to name just a few.

A Facebook spokeswoman said: “There is no place for cyber bullying on Facebook and we respond aggressively to reports of potential abuse.

“Reports involving harassment are prioritised, with most reviewed in 24 hours.”

So, basically, Facebook are doing their job. Good luck sueing them – they MONITOR this sort of thing.

Venting on social networks is simply today’s version of writing the angry note in class and slipping it to your best friend, but being caught by the teacher. Sorry ’bout it. Children will be children. Venting is part of life. Let’s be truthful here, most children don’t understand or respect what teachers do until later in their education. That’s called maturity.

You can rest assured that Facebook’s business model is not based around 11 year old kids making complaints about their teacher. Just guide them to http://www.ratemyteacher.com. (I really don’t promote that site – I think it’s terrible actually).