Social software, ranging from Facebook to gaming sites, are becoming increasingly popular on the internet. A necessary step to understanding user responsibility, conditions of use, and proprietary right of the company is read through the terms and conditions of these sites. Particularly for educators, we need to be aware of the legal implications that signing up for these sites entail.
To better understand social software sites, I decided to research and review the terms of service (TOS) of four different sites. In particular, I reviewed the sites Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and Second Life. I chose these sites to view a broad range of social software tools. Flickr and Picasa are sites for uploading and sharing photos; Facebook is a online message board for sharing comments, photos, and videos that allows users to find and stay in touch with friends; and Second Life is a online program in which users create an avatar that they can use to interact with other user avatars in a virtual community.
My review of the TOS taught me that with social software comes great responsibility. TOSs are lengthy legal documents that contain oftentimes ambiguous terminology. What is clear, however, is that content is frequently saved by the social software company and users are legally responsible for what content they upload, copy, and create on their sites. In addition, the following themes were evident across the TOSs:
Protection for Minors
All of the TOSs have clauses for the protection of people under the age of 18 and especially for those children under 13 years of age. Flickr’s TOS is contained within Yahoo’s overaching TOS and emphasizes that minors under 13 need to have a family account created by their parents/guardians. Second Life has created a program called Second Life Teen to provide greater protections from mature themes. Facebook has privacy sections within its general privacy policy related to the user’s age. All the TOS also state that no information about minors under 13 will be collected and/or given to third-party advertising companies.
Third-Parties
In order to maintain free services to users, many of these social software sites allow third-party advertisers to market services on the various social websites. TOSs contain statements regarding the collection of information and how cookies will also be used to monitor user viewing in order to market certain goods to them.
Privacy
All the social networking sites contain privacy sections in order to explain how privacy is protected. Typically, these sites have various levels of privacy available to users so that they can choose how well they want to be protected from other users in the program and on the internet. The sites also states that links to various services not directly provided by the main site, for example through third-party advertisers, may operate under their own different terms and conditions.
In regards to using social software tools in an educational setting, the educational and legal implications need to be considered. Several social software sites would probably not be educationally appropriate for a school setting given that these programs are typically designed for gaming purposes of for staying in touch with friends. On the other hand, depending the learning goals, these sites could potentially offer educational affordances and garner student interest in ways that other learning activities cannot. In my own school setting, many of my students are not even 13 years old, so this raises numerous legal concerns in my mind about the importance of using these tools in class. Overall, protecting student privacy is critical, so I would be leery of using various social software tools a classroom setting and would seek counsel from my school principal and review the district policies prior to even considering using these tools.
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