Trying to Tame Virtual Worlds: a Disney Story

Disney makes no bones about how tightly they want to control and protect their brand, and rightly so. Disney means “Safe For Kids”. There could be no swearing, no sex, no innuendo, and nothing that would allow one child (or adult pretending to be a child) to upset another.

I found myself unable to reconcile the idea of a virtual world, where kids would run around, play with objects, and chat with each other without someone saying or doing something that might upset another. Even in 1996, we knew that text-filters are no good at solving this kind of problem, so I asked for a clarification: “I’m confused. What standard should we use to decide if a message would be a problem for Disney?”

The response was one I will never forget: “Disney’s standard is quite clear:No kid will be harassed, even if they don’t know they are being harassed.”"So much for no-harm, no-foul,” Chip grumbled, quietly. This requirement lead me to some deep thinking over the coming weeks and months about a moderation design I called “The Disney Panopticon”, but that’s a post for another day…

“We spent several weeks building a UI that used pop-downs to construct sentences, and only had completely harmless words - the standard parts of grammar and safe nouns like cars, animals, and objects in the world.”

“We thought it was the perfect solution, until we set our first 14-year old boy down in front of it. Within minutes he’d created the following sentence:

I want to stick my long-necked Giraffe up your fluffy white bunny.

KA-Worlds abandoned that approach. Electric Communities is right, chat is out.”

That was pretty much settled, but it felt like we had collectively gutted the project. After all, if the kids can’t chat, how could they coordinate? It’d end up being more like a world where you could see other players playing but you couldn’t really work with them much. [Side note: Sadly, a lot of MMORPG play is like this anyway, see Playing
Alone Together.]

Habitat Chronicles: The Untold History of Toontown’s SpeedChat (or BlockChat^tm from Disney finally arrives)

This was a GREAT article. Fantastic. Please, please– if you have ANY interest/understanding in communities for kids– please read this. Why? Because it talks about how hard it is to make a completely safe community for kids that has little moderation overhead (aka, paying humans to oversee kids).

Nicktropolis & Disney’s VMK are both fully fortified like this… Nicktropolis has a predictive text chat system which I found really frustrating (I wanted to write “El Tigre” and it kept coming out “Elbow Tiger”). Of course there are many other sites that attempt this tactic as well, but they aren’t kid networks…

This is a great article to remind people just how clever tweens/teens are… and how they can figure a way around any type of wall you try to build.

Parents & Teens & safety and the new "talk”

Way to go, parents – 86.4% of teens say their parents have discussed online safety with them. That’s teen users of the social virtual world Habbo.com, anyway, but I suspect they’re very representative of teen social-networkers in general. Habbo recently completed its Teen Online Safety Awareness Month, which it says got “over 20,000 teens taking part in safety-related activities and educational programs, including many that involved discussion time between the teens and their parents. Nearly 21,000 teens received limited edition virtual safety badges to show that they had their parents read Habbo’s online safety guide. Nearly 10,000 teens visited a virtual lounge within the community with a safety theme.“

On the sobering side, here are other key findings:

* 51.7% visit chat rooms at least once every day
* 18.5% have “experienced chatting online with someone they found out was an adult pretending to be much younger”
* 57.2% have “chatted, IM’d or emailed with someone online that they have never met face to face”
* 26.6% have “been asked questions about their sexuality or sexual experiences while chatting online that made them feel uncomfortable”
* 31.7% have posted personal information online
* 72.5% “are aware that anyone can view personal information they post online, not just their friends.”

BlogSafety Community: Parents & kids talk Net safety …

I am sincerely impressed with Habbo.com– no matter how “lego” in appearance (must be good if that’s my only dig). Habbo has taken some impressive steps to secure themselves as SECURE. Oh the security of it all.

I would like to see OTHER virtual worlds/mega-uber communities take on such initiatives and public safety services. And not just to “out do” other communities, or “make themselves APPEAR social conscious” but because this is an established medium that needs to get more credit.

These stats are nuts though. 31.7% have posted PERSONAL INFORMATION online? THIS is why we have human screeners/moderators.

Okay: this has been my experience in the last two years with kids/tweens online. They are VERY apprehensive at first. Many lurk. They observe. They get into the “mix” and still manage to hold onto some of that “stranger danger” mentality. Then, after a couple months they start to get used to the site and consider themselves “old school” and trust builds. That trust is what makes a deal breaker with any stranger-danger mentality. I’ve found that most kids after a month+ of regular posting start to get so comfortable that they’re willing to post personal information. This isn’t for ALL kids/tweens… but quite a few. “No one is going to hurt me here, I know all of these people.” –That is the mentality.

I must admit: there is a very small percentage of “pushers”

I consider a “pusher” to be a kid that needs to push the limit in the name of fun/boredom. They’re not regulars (usually), and typically leave a couple borderline CRUDE comments and their phone number/email address. Who knows if it actually IS there phone number… they’ll usually make some comment about looking for a “sexy” guy. Yes, guy– these “pushers” tend to be girls, or pretending to be girls. On our site, we usually get about 3 comments a month like this in our quote submission, fan fiction submission, or blog. Sometimes they’re cleverly disguised so that safety filters miss them. Like: “J5E5N5 I6F3E1R22. call me” or “My friends at yolanda at email dot com tell me i’m hot.”

Kids & Tweens & Teens are sneaky wee buggers, but isn’t that all a part of the learning experience? That’s why it’s so important for anyone dealing with tweens/teens/kids to have a strong understanding of their audience. Not just “I was a kid once” or “My community filter will clear that out.” This whole “anyone” can screen/moderate/interact/be trusted with children is unacceptable.

I saw a job description for Neopets screeners and I was ticked. Barely any information about safety or experience– basically it was a call to action for any bored hobo to hop off the train and hang with some kids online… sure there was “training” mentioned, but that’s not good enough in my mind. I am sorry… I may not have my own tater tots yet, but I can promise you– I wouldn’t want just any-old-schmoe monitoring my kids online or offline. That is for certain.