As online social networking has become prevalent in everyday lives, traditional considerations of personal privacy have changed. The mass adoption of social networking sites has led to users possibly making themselves vulnerable to victimisation and damage to one's name or reputation by others, due to unwise postings and revelations or adding people into their online networks who they do not know in real life (Patchin & Hinduja 2010).
Privacy can be said to be "the rights of individuals to enjoy autonomy, to be left alone, and to determine whether and how information about one's self is revealed to others'" (Stein & Sinha, in Livingstone 2002). This essay will look at why privacy is a contentious issue for users of social networking sites, focusing on the specific case of teenager Megan Meier. Using this case, this essay will look at the ways in which governments are trying to prevent the same outcome recurring in the future.
All social networking sites, from Facebook to Myspace, share the basic purpose of online interaction and communications, with users revelling in the freedom and communion facilitated from this (Gross & Acquisti 2005). However, as Bednall et al state "like all new technologies, social networking sites offer opportunities to those with anti-social motives to exploit these relatively open systems" (2009, p.2). These anti-social motives can be seen in the case of Megan Meier.
Meier (pictured right) is an American teenager
who committed suicide in 2006 after reading defamatory posts written about her on Myspace from "Josh Evans", a 16-year-old boy who had recently befriended her on the site. 13-year-old Meier had become enamoured with "Evans" over the six weeks of their online relationship before her tragic death.After weeks of flirtation, "Evans" inexplicably became cruel, sending Meier a message that stated, "I don't want to be friends with you anymore because you're not nice to your friends". The day before Meier committed suicide, "Evans" had publicly posted her private messages, as well as derogatory comments of "his" own (Schwartz 2009). According to Meier's father the last message she saw before committing suicide was from "Evans" and said "Everybody in O'Fallon knows who you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you".
The "Evans" account turned out to be fake, created by Lori Drew (pictured left), the mother of a former friend of Meier's, along with her daughter Sarah Drew and 18-year-old assistant Ashley Giles. Drew allegedly created the fictitious profile in order to find out what Meier was saying about her daughter and according to US Attorney Thomas O'Brien, "to print out the conversations and take it to Megan's school and let people make fun of this depressed 13-year-old girl". Authorities in Missouri failed to charge Drew after they were unable to find a law that she had broken, however Drew had been charged with four potential felony counts of unauthorised computer access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act but was acquitted of all charges in 2009.Drew breached Meier's privacy by setting up the fake account, as Myspace Terms and Conditions include representing and warranting that "all information you submit is truthful and accurate" and that your profile will be deleted if Myspace believes "you are over 18 and represent yourself as under 18". On a personal level, Drew gained Meier's trust because Meier thought she was talking to a peer, someone who she went on to develop romantic feelings for. At no point during their correspondence did Meier ever believe she was talking to a 47-year-old woman who lived four houses away from her.
Because the internet is a relatively recent technological development, laws need to be amended so perpetrator's know that what they're doing is punishable by law, hopefully resulting in a decrease in the number of teenage suicides relating to privacy issues on social networking sites. Representative Linda Sanchez introduced H.R. 1966, the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act in America, on April 2, 2009 (Figliola 2009). However, King warns "in our efforts to make the Internet safer, we must be cautious not to erode the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment" and that "policymakers should avoid the temptation to enact knee-jerk legislation that may be overly broad or create unintended consequences" (King 2010, p.848).
In order to be mindful of the right to freedom of speech, Strahilevitz proposes applying a formal social network theory as a tool for aiding interpretations of privacy in legal cases. He suggests basing conclusions regarding privacy "on what the parties should have expected to follow the initial disclosure of information by someone other than the defendant" (Strahilevitz in Gross & Acquisti 2005, p.2).
The proposal by Strahilevitz highlights the importance of only adding people to your online social networks that you know in real life. Boyd believes that online social networks are a simplistic binary relation in where you are either "friend or not" and notes that "there is no way to determine what metric was used or what the role or weight of the relationship is" (Boyd in Gross & Acquisti 2005, p.2).
Legislation is slowly being updated, though the real challenge is to get teenagers to understand the need to protect their information and profiles online. Onwuasoanya, Skornyakov and Post "recommend that future social networks should emphasise features to craft different privacy settings for different groups of friends in order to help users protect their privacy online" (2008, p.1). This includes greater awareness of the possible dangers of accepting friend requests from people you don't know in real life.
Legislation is being updated after tragedies are occurring. The governments need to act fast and act quickly and implement tough legislation so that people like Lori Drew don't get acquitted for invading a 13-year-old girl's privacy which led to her suicide. The proposed internet filter and age restrictions are of no use; tougher legislation and greater education and awareness in schools are needed so no more teenagers end up taking their own lives over an invasion of their privacy on social networking sites.
by Rebecca Carson - S2562932
References
Online:
Harvey, Mike, 'First cyber-bullying trial hears how Megan Meier, 13, killed herself after online taunts', Times Online, 20 November 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5196441.ece
'Lori Drew charged over Myspace suicide', Sydney Morning Herald, 16 May 2008 http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/16/1210765091402.html
Myspace.com Terms of Use Agreement, 25 June 2009
http://www.myspace.com/help/terms
Pokin, Steve 2007, 'Megan Taylor Meier - The Story', Megan Meier Foundation, 13 November 2007
http://www.meganmeierfoundation.org/story/
Zetter, Kim, 'Judge Acquits Lori Drew in Cyberbullying Case, Overrules Jury', Wired, 2 July 2009
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/drew_court/
Scholarly
Patchin, Justin W. & Hinduja, Sameer 2010, 'Changes in adolescent online social networking behaviors from 2006 to 2009', In Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 26, issue 6, p. 1818-1821. Retrieved from Science Direct database.
Stein & Sinha, in Livingstone 2002
Gross, Ralph & Acquisti, Alessandro 2005, 'Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks', Retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
Schwartz, Kate 2009, 'Criminal liability for internet culprits: the need for updated state laws covering the full spectrum of cyber victimization', In Washington Law Review 407, Retrieved from LexisNexis.
Figliola, Patricia M. 2009, 'Text and Multimedia Messaging: Emerging Issues for Congress', In Congressional Research Service
http://www.ipmall.info/hosted_resources/crs/RL34632_091022.pdf
King, Alison 2010, 'Constitutionality of Cyberbullying Laws: Keeping the Online Playground Safe for Both Teens and Free Speech', Vanderbilt Law Review vol. 63, p.848, Retrieved from Hein Online.
Onwuasoanya, Anthony, Skornyako, Maxim & Post, Jonathan 2008, 'Enhancing Privacy on Social Networks By Segregating Different Social Spheres', p.1, Retrieved from Google Scholar.
