[LM_NET] Getting cyberbullying material removed

[Nancy Willard <nwillard@CSRIU.ORG>]

HI folks.

One of the things I have noted is that many educators simply do not know
that cyberbullying material can generally be quickly removed from web sites,
like MySpace. 

This morning I received an email from a woman who sent me the following URL
about a cyberbullying problem:
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060328/NEWS08/603280372/10
24

The woman who sent me the URL was a friend of the mother of the child noted
in the story. The material was on MySpace. I reported it to MySpace, with
the URLs. They investigated and this is the message they sent to me and the
woman who reported the problem to me:

> We have removed the group in question, the moderator who created the group, as
> well as two profiles contributing to the abuse in the groupšs forum.  If there
> is any further abusive content being posted related to this issue, please
> report it immediately and it will be dealt with accordingly.

PLEASE let your administrators and counselors know that asking the site to
remove the material is a very important step!!! I outline in my book,
Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats (info on my web site) that this is an
important step to take, as well as the other possible action options.

IF you ever have an incident where a web site has been contacted about the
presence of cyberbullying material, and has refused to remove the material,
PLEASE IMMEDIATELY LET ME KNOW!

I have heard stories of Yahoo refusing to remove harmful material, but this
was several years ago. www.cbc.ca/national/news/cyberbullying. If a site
refuses to remove harmful material, I am now at the point of having enough
connections with national news media that I will be able to get good
coverage to make this site look *really bad*. I will certainly be willing to
take actions on behalf of any of your students with any recalcitrant sites
-- and I would like to know which ones cause problems.

Please send this message to your administrators and counselors. (The
American School Counselors Association is setting up distribution of my book
-- so counselors will be able to get it through them.)

Nancy
-- 
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
http://cyberbully.org
nwillard@csriu.org

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