I knew the Metro was owned by Associated Newspapers, but it now seems to have turned into a facsimile of the Daily Mail.
The hard porn lurking on teenage blog sites says their story today in the paper edition.
The vast majority of blogs on top social websites contain potentially offensive material, a study shows.
The pages on sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Google’s blogger.com are a hit among children but can hold porn or adult language.
The popularity of blogging has exploded in the past 12 months with the number doubling to 70million.
But some of the most popular sites are shamelessly devoted to sex such as ‘Belle de Jour, diary of a London call girl’ and ‘Girl with a one-track mind, diary of a sex fiend’.
Needless to say, it’s based on “research” (PDF file) by an outfit called Scansafe, who make errm web filtering software for business and for paranoid parents. If you look at the PDF, which the Metro clearly didn’t bother doing, you’ll find there’s absolutely no substantiation of these claims whatsoever. Who’da thunk it?
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This type of fear mongering could also have been encouraged by the recent hullabaloo created by our very own ‘blog elite’ regarding Kathy Sierra and her ‘death threats’. Monkey see, monkey do.
In essence, marketers hunt for juicy stories before publishing some nonsensical claptrap to the usual PR channels. See http://www.badscience.net for more information.
If the blogging web superstars go around promoting the view that blogs are full of bloodthirsty stalkers waiting for you behind that ‘submit’ button, it was just a matter of time before the snake-oil salesman piggybacked that trend.
Shame.
Nothing compared to the fiendish shennanigans at over 50s portals…
LOL. You’re always where the action’s happening!
Grrr. Lazy PR and lazy journalism.
And as for the over 50’s — I did see Antony’s post about the site — and wondered what he was doing there in the first place.
His pic on his blog does suggest some hair loss, but I wouldn’t have put him as a target for an over 50s site.
Apparently, that’s what happens once you’ve got two children, Simon. Heheh.
It was research. I don’t know if I’ve ever admitted this but… I work in marketing :-)