[ Article posted to newsgroup--a San Francisco Chronicle technology column links AOL's pedophile problems to their user policies. ] From: Mimi Kahn Newsgroups: alt.aol-sucks Subject: The S.F. Chronicle Says AOL Sucks Date: 21 Sep 1995 17:19:02 GMT Organization: Megabyte Press From today's San Francisco Chronicle, which my husband just spotted in the paper version: American Online's Multi-Identity Crisis Robert Rossney You'd think the recent FBI raids on the America Online users accused of operating a child- pornography ring would have gotten more press than they did. It was the largest coordinated seizure of personal computers in history: more than 100 homes were raided, and a dozen people were arrested. Compared to earlier scares, this story hasn't been getting huge play -- even though, for once, there seem to be actual criminals and an actual victim, a 10-year-old boy who's been missing since 1993. There have been actual arrests, too, which is inconvenient for people who like to use the online-porn issue to push for more laws: It sure looks as if we have all the laws we need to arrest people who distribute child pornography and abduct children. But what this story has thrown into sharp focus is this: America Online, the nation's most popular online service, can be awfully unsavory. Three things are responsible for this. The first is anonymity. AOL lets any customer have up to five ``screen names.'' Users can change these at any time. The screen names are ostensibly meant to give parents a way to let their kids use their AOL accounts. But allowing users to change names lets anyone throw away his or her identity if it starts developing a bad reputation. So when people find out that UncleJim is online cruising for teenagers, or that HotGirl4U is actually a boy, those identities vanish, and the people behind them re-emerge under different names. Disposable identity might not cause much mischief in a small community. But what AOL's president Steve Case calls ``the AOL community'' comprises 3.5 million people. Combine this huge population with the problem of fluid identity, and it's not surprising that AOL is having trouble. Imagine a place with three times the population of San Francisco where nobody is accountable to anybody. And if you own a computer, or if you've been thinking about buying one, then you probably know about the third big problem: the diskettes offering 10 free hours on AOL. They're everywhere. AOL is the second-largest consumer of diskettes in the world after Microsoft, and those diskettes are all going out to spread the AOL gospel. One the one hand, it's a brilliant and effective marketing strategy: Millions of people have played with their 10 free hours, liked what they've seen on AOL, and stuck around after the meter started running. But it's also a very easy system to abuse. People who want to wreak havoc on AOL can spend 10 free hours doing it, and then just find another diskette and start over. AOL wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants a family system that appeals to kids. It also wants to keep making money off the hot-chat crowd. And it's terrified that the Microsoft Network is going to eat its lunch, so it's selling harder than ever. Unfortunately, in the process it's built a system that makes it easy for predators to operate, and has then turned around and aggressively marketed it to prey. AOL had better figure something out. As it stands, this is not going to end well for it. -- Mimi http://www.writething.com/cybrary/ Never again!