Posts Tagged ‘Policy’

There are a lot of things that people believe about YouTube that are just plain untrue—from flawed tips on how to get more views to the way that the video site deals with flagged videos, and more. After the jump we debunk 5 of the most common YouTube Policy myths.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

The 2008 presidential election helped shape the apathy dust off of many U.S. citizens. In record numbers, people became interested in the political process and its outcome. It remains to be seen how many folks will revert back to their ‘innocent bystander’ ways. For those who want to carry the torch of ‘change’ a step further, meet PolicyPitch.

The community action platform, developed by New Orleans-based venture development company Barbarian Enterprises, lets you turn your neighborhood improvements ideas into reality.

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Sarah Perez has started a great conversation about whether or not social network should be regulated. I’m excited to see the conversation at least started as I have mentioned this before. Sarah quotes an article in today’s Guardian which states that, “Nine out of 10 people think there should be tighter regulation of information on social networking websites” and “89% of those surveyed by the Press Complaints Commission said there should be a set of widely accepted rules to help prevent personal information – such as private photographs – being abused.”

The bottom line is that people believe there should be regulations but in this country at least, very little regulation (if any) has been focused on social networks aside from privacy policies and the creation of policies to protect children. One of the most substantial problems is that people are not aware how their information is being used and how public it really is when they post it online.

Theoretically a similar argument could be made for just about any online service that doesn’t have bank-like security. Can you blame the ignorance of the user for information being publicly displayed? While there is legislation on the table in the European Union and there has been proposed legislation in the United States, nothing has happened so far.

With the recent breach of privacy of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan on MySpace being blamed on a failed Yahoo! API, the issue of user privacy and protection is back at the forefront. The question is: should there be laws that protect the users online when interacting with social networks?