The darker side of Second Life

After discussing Second Life on Tuesday I wanted to take a deeper look into this alternate world. I found an article published in time about the problems that Second Life deals with. The list of problems that Second Life offers are more than we saw in the video during class. According to this article from Time, the FBI had to shut down the site for a bit due to their illegal gambling as well as issues with child pornography.
I find these issues more than appalling so I took a deeper look into the alternate sex life that Second Life offers to its users. I found this video on Youtube that the Early Show did about this interesting, to say the least, way that people have found to engage in questionable acts.
People use Second Life to engage in sexual behaviors and even purchase sex. Prostitution is very common in Second Life. A mom of two reveals that she is, for lack of a better work, a pimp on Second Life, and the most disturbing thing about this woman is that she is also on the PTA, and doesn't care enough that people could trace her back to her house, not even for the security of her own children.
Sex in Second Life is quite desirable. After reading this article and watching this video I thought about all of the scary issues that surround Second Life. Someone could potentially design their avatar to look younger than 18 for older, child rapists, to engage in sex with. I remember discussing digitally created child pornography in Media 321. A judge ruled that since digitally created children for child pornography did not have a victim, and also due to free speech and expression, and therefore could not be deemed child porn. To me it seems that courts are having difficulty keeping up with the internet and new technology. Second Life may be an outlet for rapists and sexual perverts to express themselves, all of this is just extremely frightening to me.

Group Formation

After class on Thursday I was thinking about all of the different groups that I have joined on facebook. I do not have a twitter or anything else so I took a closer look at the groups that I have joined over the past four years of my facebook user-ship. Honestly, I have no idea why I joined some, and the scary fact is that these people now have access to my page. I guess I was not as aware as I thought about joining groups on faceook.

When I googled, "how to make a facebook group" pages upon pages popped up instructing me, even video's on youtube came up visually showing me how to make such a group. Since it seems so easy to create groups on facebook I wondered what else was out there.

I found google groups and yahoo groups.



Anyone can join these groups. People with common interests can come together, whether it be scrap-booking or race car driving, there is a group for everyone out there. There are both positives and negatives that are associated with online groups. Networking is more than a positive, but the major negative is the lack of privacy and know-how of who can get your information. Next time I accept a facebook group invitation, I will think hard about whether or not to accept it.