Social-Networking Sites MySpace and Facebook – It’s Time For Some Change

In my previous entry, I wrote about the ongoing tactic used by social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to remove pictures of mothers breastfeeding their children as they deemed them to be “offensive” and/or “pornographic” in nature. Indeed, the blogosphere has been ablaze with posts either expressing outrage at this continued discrimination against women or worse, people trying to rationalize that images of breastfeeding mothers would be as appropriate as seeing pictures of people going to the bathroom as both are ‘natural acts’ (how’s that for a mature, rational thought process – trying to connect providing sustenance to a baby with the process of excretion). Now I’ve already made my position on this clear in my last post, but as I inferred near the end of that entry, there is another related issue arising from this that bears some examination for further discussion and debate. So what I want to discuss here is the framework under which this controversy is occurring and that is how should we define the balance between how end users of a social-networking site communicate and share and the rights/responsibilities of the owners/managers of these online community websites. As it’s pretty much understood why people are users/members of these social-networking websites, I’ll start by looking at the situation from the perspective of the companies/organizations that own these Web 2.0 ventures.

For starters, there can be little doubt that as the owners/managers of these online community sites, it is their prerogative to decide not only what content they will allow to be shared on their site, but also the type of users they’ll grant access to. These guidelines or rules, often described in the site’s Terms of Service agreement, are meant to serve as a filter to help the site owner’s build the online community they hope to attract and nurture on their domain. However, as much as these rules or regulations are meant to define the nature and makeup of the site’s membership, the ultimate goal with social-networking sites is to make it as accessible and inviting to as many users as possible, thereby encouraging a heterogeneity of users to their site for interaction and communication.

Now, there’s no question that both Facebook and MySpace are not considered ’speciality’ sites or social-networking sites that cater exclusively to people who share a common cultural norms system or values/belief structure. And yet, reading many of the statements released by Facebook and MySpace concerning their policy of removing any images of mothers breastfeeding their babies from their respective sites, it becomes clear that there are in fact cultural norms being used to determine what kinds of interaction and sharing will be allowed on these sites, norms that not only are out of sync with most of the world, but ones that are not aligned with most state/provincial and federal laws concerning public breastfeeding. As such, it becomes a little more difficult to view these two social-networking sites as not being ones that cater more to the North-American societal segment that would agree that women can reveal portions of the breast for titillation and not because they are providing sustenance to their child.

In the ‘real world’, any social interaction between people is affected by the cultural/social norms of the society that they are a part of and as these ‘real world’ interactions are often limited by geographical proximity, there is a strong likelihood that both parties have a large number of these norms/values in common. With the creation of the internet though, people can now interact with others over wide distances, and cultural/social differences that are normally apparent in the ‘real world’ are less obvious. However, that doesn’t mean those differences aren’t there or that they don’t factor into how people communicate over the internet. While this divergence in cultural/social norms may have been less apparent a few years ago when these social-networking sites were still emergent ‘technologies’, given the greater sense of comfort and ease end users have using these sites, it is very likely that the debate over the appropriateness of breastfeeding images on social-networking sites is but the tip of the iceberg.

While Facebook and MySpace have been successful to date in creating a vibrant, diverse membership, the fact that these sites deem something to be “offensive” which the majority of the world’s cultures and societies see as being perfectly natural indicates a need for re-evaluation of how their sites function. Perhaps instead of one generic site, geographic-regional ones will need to be created that better relate and mirror the norms and cultural standards of people in various parts of the world so that members of these online communities won’t be subjected to having their exchange of information and ideas being regulated on the basis of one specific region’s social/cultural norms. At the moment, MySpace is in fact currently testing out over 20 different country-specific beta versions of their site, though perhaps this is more a result of losing ground to Facebook in 2008 among international users of these social-networking sites than a recognition that a more broad understanding of social mores and values is needed for such sites to be relevant outside of their geographic physical base.

Regardless, the debate over the removal of pictures of breastfeeding moms from these two social-networking sites has highlighted the reality that these kinds of online community sites have to adapt new measures to ensure that they not only retain their global presence on the internet, but also so that they remain relevant to as many internet users by not restricting their interpretation of acceptable conduct to a narrow cultural viewpoint as it currently does.

Some other posts you may enjoy:

1. Yet Another Breastfeeding Controversy – Here We Go Again
2. Is Social Media Making Us Uncaring?
3. Telling The Story Of Ourselves
4. TweetsGiving – A Celebration of Gratitude
5. Twitter and Me – My Trip ‘Round The Twitterverse
6. I’m More Than Just A Number

posted on January 8th, 2009 | 4 Comments » | Tags: breastfeeding, cultural norms, Culture, Facebook, internet, MySpace, online community sites, social networking sites, Web 2.0 |