Session 7: Management and Conflict

Belated post, did not realize initial post hadn't posted until sometime later and focused on final project instead...

Our final project focuses on Facebook as the primary SNS of concern. Facebook governance is stated in two primary pages with additional information linked to these pages: the Terms of Service page, entitled Statements of Rights and Responsibilities, and the Privacy Policy which includes Facebook's Principles, Privacy Policy, and information about safe use and the information they collect. Unfortunately for this post, my Friends and I are law-abiding citizens of Facebook and I was unable to identify any obvious infringements other than that I gave my password to my boyfriend to login to my account while I couldn't type easily due to aggravation of old hand injuries. I trust him and I changed the password as soon as I could type again.

I did, however, learn that Facebook was engaging its users in creating updated governance documents. They had spent several months collecting user input and creating new documents considering that input and put the resulting documents and the original documents to a vote among all Facebook users. See the Facebook Site Governance page for details. I found this particularly interesting since we just read an article, "Obfuscatocracy: A stakeholder analysis of governing documents for virtual worlds," which explicitly suggests that sites involve the users in the creation of governing documents to ensure that needs of all parties are considered. It also shows that the Facebook shows signs of being self-aware as described in Gazan's "When Online Communities Become Self-Aware." The redrafting of the governing documents was begun because of the questions and complaints Facebook received, the new drafts were created with user input, and the final results put to a vote among the users. I would also suggest that Facebook contains numerous micro-communities, each group or circle of Friends, and that many of these micro-communities are also self-aware in that they create their own norms...for instance my circle of church friends abides by certain norms while my network of former co-workers abide by a completely different set. It can be difficult to balance these, as what is acceptable to one group may be considered offensive in another.
Having studied the various laws and legislative attempts to control online content or access to it, I found Michael Madison's "Social Software, Groups, and Governance" to be extremely interesting, though I am not certain I understood it all. It is clear that as new technologies appear and the use of technology changes so quickly, legal governance will almost certainly be far behind the times. Take the MySpace suicide case for instance...external law has not caught up with the social nature of the internet and the case had to be tried under violation of the exisiting terms of service: she was accused of creating a false identity. Creators of these sites cannot anticipate every way in which the site may be used. You'll find that many updated Terms of Service, including the new Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities does include a clear "malicious use" clause which will have to suffice until external law can catch up. Finding the line between external and internal, formal and informal governance is, and will continue to be, a challenge as we move forward with an ever-changing online landscape.