Monday, MySpace struck an agreement with attorney generals from every state in the union—except Texas—in which the social networking site promised to enact measures to better keep sexual predators at bay. Among the terms MySpace has voluntarily agreed to adopt: separating children's profiles from those of adults, automatically setting profiles of users under 18 to "private" to prevent perverts from viewing them, and, most important, creating a "task force to find ways to verify ages and identities online." While verifying age on the Web has typically been an exercise in failure (it doesn't take a genius to bypass measures on, say, Budweiser's website), the task force hopes to have recommendations by the end of the year.
The agreement, on the heels of a similar one Facebook agreed to last October and the horrific story of a teenage girl committing suicide after being bullied online by her neighbor's parents, comes not a moment too soon. Today, the New York Post reports that two married strippers were charged with 56 counts of sex abuse for luring a pair of 15-year-old girls to their Queens apartment, having sex with them, and then taking them to a strip club where they doled out blow jobs to patrons. For this, they face up to 15 years in prison.
Next up: getting your 14-year-old brother to stop cyber-chatting Islamofascist Jihad recruiters.