Moving on…

This youtube explosion over the past four days has been a serious eye opener. I love that we got featured because there are now half a million people that know we exist. This has been a huge help flow to Allee and I which we truly appreciate. The disconcerting part of all of this is twofold. One: Youtube takes negligible responsibility for the content/communications of its users. In talking about it with Allee, she says that in the early nineties when the idea of social networking and these types of sites came into being, the aspect of a moral conscience is part what held back their development especially as per willisville, her prototype for such a network. In other words, it was not knowing how to handle/take responsibility for user content that slowed the progress of this type of site. Fast forward to the present: my experience this week points to the fact that that question still has not been answered and is actually being largely ignored as far as I can see. Free speech and self-expression are vital to the mental health of any society, right? But when it comes to comments of a hateful and violent nature, could we have some attempts to handle that? With the amount of traffic and money being generated by youtube, I think the resources exist to find a way to take some care and responsibility for what is going on. I don’t mind if someone doesn’t like what i do! But is it really okay for death threats to come through with no recourse? The second major thing I’m trying to wrap my head around is the anger out there between the sexes that I was blissfully unaware of as an American woman in the year 2007. Who knew that there were this many people who feel like sex and cooking are the only things that a woman is good for?

November 29th, 2007