Great Stuff from Net Family News

• 9 things that make viral hoaxes challenging November 18, 2021
  Remember “Blue Whale”? Almost five years ago, when I was getting to the bottom of that murky hoax, it wasn’t yet understood as one. It was being called a “suicide game,” and those two words were scaring parents around the world, literally. I was looking all over the Web for reliable sources and found my […]
  Anne
• The metaverse and the Meta part October 31, 2021
  I hadn’t read Snow Crash. So I first learned about the metaverse in 2008, right after returning from a family trip around the world and a few months before Barack Obama was elected President for the first time. I was a little disoriented coming back to America after 10 months in many other countries, especially […]
  Anne
• Take-aways from the ‘Facebook Files’ October 9, 2021
  What a week it has been, right? At least for those of us who follow and/or use social media. There was the naming of whistleblower Frances Haugen on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, US time; the hours-long outage of all of Facebook’s products Monday; Haugen’s testimony on Capitol Hill Tuesday, a report that hackers were offering […]
  Anne
• New game to help middle schoolers be media literacy masters September 21, 2021
  It’s definitely not your typical American high school – not the one in “Agents of Influence.” But high school is the backdrop, which is smart for a media literacy videogame aimed at middle schoolers, right? Especially a sketchy, slightly dystopian fictional one like “Virginia Hall High,” in which the game is set. First, the school […]
  Anne
• Countering ‘hate raids’ needs to be coordinated too September 2, 2021
  The “hate raids” on Twitch spotlight an important online safety reality: It’s increasingly a cross-platform effort. Hate raids, or hate spam, is harassment on steroids and, as the Washington Post points out, it’s a form of online harm that has been around for years but “became a larger Twitch concern [last] month after a streamer […]
  Anne
• Apple & the child online safety challenge August 26, 2021
  2nd important update Sept. 19: As if in direct response to the open letter from privacy activists around the world, the WeProtect Global Alliance published their own statement saying Apple must not pause its expanded protections, the Guardian reported. I stand by my thoughts in the update just below. We need privacy activists and protection […]
  Anne
• If anything needs to go viral, it’s this… July 2, 2021
  …the message, “Report it. Don’t share it.”  The “it” in this public awareness campaign Facebook just launched is child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the accurate term for what is typically called “child pornography” in the United States. Thankfully, it’s extremely unlikely you’ll ever see content like this. “The prevalence of this content on our platform […]
  Anne
• Key piece of the puzzle: Australia’s ‘Safety by Design’ tools June 23, 2021
  A vital piece of the global online safety puzzle has just fallen into place: Australia’s eSafety Commissioner’s Office this week unveiled its Safety by Design tools for Internet companies everywhere. They’re the outgrowth of extensive international research and consultation with people in industry, government, academia and advocacy, including youth and parents – a process eSafety […]
  Anne
• How our kids can become ‘indistractable’ June 18, 2021
  I was almost too distracted over the past couple of days to write this review of Indistractable. But there’s some real “digital parenting” wisdom in it, so here we are, blog post done. For example, co-author Nir Eyal says, “Teach traction.” The opposite of distraction isn’t focus, as we typically think. It’s traction, which “comes […]
  Anne
• Could platforms design for 2nd chances?: Insight from key study May 28, 2021
  No stage of life is easy, but being a teen is hard in a very particular way. “Adolescence is a period of rapid cognitive, social and emotional development,” said researcher Amanda Lenhart, Health & Data lead at the Data & Society Research Institute in New York, at a conference this week, for example. “They’re a […]
  Anne