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Online Safety: What’s the Impact?

What happens if things get “a bit” out of control? What happens if the spammers start to win? What happens if the site takes a negative tone?

In the worst cases, terrible things can happen. Current safeguards are inadequate to reduce such occurrences as griefers egging on someone who has threatened to commit suicide (which happened on Justin.tv and other sites), or a predator joining your site to cause emotional, financial or even physical harm to other members.

Even without tragic outcomes or front-page headlines, abusers affect the very nature of the social site. Abuse is often exacerbated by what is called the “network effect”. For instance, when participants on a site conclude that botters and griefers are winning the battle over the social environment, they leave in large, connected clusters. A good example of seeing connected groups move together was the exodus of members from MySpace to Facebook.

Regulatory bodies are frustrated – and mobilizing to enforce compliance with restrictive online policies if the online community does not show progress toward solving the problems of online abuse. Though the more serious problems occur infrequently, they get disproportionate attention from the media, which increases consumer concerns and further encourages lawmakers to consider more restrictive policies.

As social networking and social gaming grow, the risks to providers increase. Risks inherent in user-generated content, as well as new and different types of communications, increase companies’ legal exposure and the potential threats to business models.