[Air-L] Does MySpace have a drug-talk policy?

[danah boyd]

Sorta.  It's part of their terms: http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.terms

"MySpace may reject, refuse to post or delete any Content for any or  
no reason, including Content that in the sole judgment of MySpace  
violates this Agreement or which may be offensive, illegal or violate  
the rights of any person or entity, or harm or threaten the safety of  
any person or entity."

"Content/Activity Prohibited.... constitutes or promotes information  
that you know is false or misleading or promotes illegal activities or  
conduct that is abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory or libelous;"


This approach is pretty much the industry standard in the U.S.  They  
have the right to remove anything that advocates illegal activities.   
At the same time, the industry norm is also to ignore most  
conversations concerning drugs (especially those questioning the logic  
behind the legal statutes and other policy-related debates).  The only  
time that I've seen a company act on its policy wrt drugs is when  
dealers have set up pages or when people are talking about how to buy  
drugs.  When it comes to these things though, there's another policy  
that's typically invoked: no right to commercial activity.  In general  
though, free speech has typically trumped in this space, but the  
companies do try to protect themselves.  That said, most community  
managers have the attitude of "if you're so stupid as to talk about  
that in a public place, go ahead and do it... it's not us that'll be  
down your neck, but those whose punishments are much more severe."  I  
have no doubt that companies have been subpoenaed for data concerning  
drug-related posts by users.

As for the conversation... to the best of my knowledge, except in the  
case of LiveJournal, there's not a big public discussion of these  
terms.  At the same time, there are a bunch of us who are regularly  
involved in helping the companies develop sane terms that protect  
them, while giving users freedom to do as they please (even if that  
means legal trouble for them).

danah



On Mar 10, 2008, at 11:45 PM, Monica Barratt wrote:

> Just wondered if anyone researching SNS's had come across policies
> that deal with drug discussion in their travels? I've only just
> started exploring MySpace and haven't had any luck finding any
> documentation about any rules or policies, if they exist. I've also
> not noticed anything on Facebook.
>
> In my PhD research with online forums, most of the ones in Australia
> where drug discussion occurs have developed guidelines or rules to
> manage this - so I'm wondering if this has also happened on social
> networking sites
>
> thanks in advance
> monica
>
>
> Monica Barratt
> PhD Student
> National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne, AU)
> +61 407 778 938
> http://db.ndri.curtin.edu.au/staff.asp?persid=650
> http://www.ndri.curtin.edu.au/drugsonforums/
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