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Posted

.............:blank:...............

 

I feel dirty reading that. Then I decided to click the link and....dear lord I hope nobody is monitoring my PC or I'll be in the News of the World with the caption "sick pervert" by tomorrow.

Posted

To be fair, it makes no comment about the sexualisation of it. The name is horrible and implies it, but presumably the items will be decorated with fairy princesses, and not be thongs/push-up bras or anything.

 

It's still dubious and just...weird though.

Posted

The link won't work for me... so this may be covered in the article, but...

 

Does it look into why people are spending excessive time on the internet, and maybe that reason is the same for their depression (ie. loneeeeer).

Posted
Does it look into why people are spending excessive time on the internet, and maybe that reason is the same for their depression (ie. loneeeeer).

 

It doesn't look into anything. They sent out a dumb questionnaire and the results showed a trend between depression and internet addiction.

 

They questioned 1319 people.

18 people were internet addicts.

They then chose a similar range (same mean age, same amount of male/female) of 18 non-addicts and compared the two.

 

So it's a load of rubbish.

Posted (edited)

I wouldn't say it's a load of rubbish. It seems like a fairly valid way of examining an issue. The main thing is that we can't read the full text; seeing exactly how the observations were matched would be helpful. If it is just on age and gender then it is somewhat weaker than if it were to match on other more potentially powerful confounders. But that's a weakness in questionaires - you can only keep attention for so long.

 

There's also that famous phrase about how correlation does not imply causation (and the author says as much in the Guardian article). In my life internet addiction would be more a symptom of depression than a cause.

Edited by Mr_Odwin
Posted
I wouldn't say it's a load of rubbish. It seems like a fairly valid way of examining an issue. The main thing is that we can't read the full text; seeing exactly how the observations were matched would be helpful. If it is just on age and gender then it is somewhat weaker than if it were to match on other more potentially powerful confounders. But that's a weakness in questionaires - you can only keep attention for so long.

 

There's also that famous phrase about how correlation does not imply causation (and the author says as much in the Guardian article). In my life internet addiction would be more a symptom of depression than a cause.

 

Agree with this. At the same time it's only as valid and relevant as the questions asked and answers given.

 

They say its linked, but excessive use of t'internets is actually be a symptom rather than a cause of depression. Think about it, depressed people don't function well. They don't go out, and don't like themselves very much. It's not beyond any realms of belief that they'd spend most of the time online.

 

Kinda similar to statistics the find people with psoriatic arthritis, and on certain meds, are clinically obese. Well that may be the result of having a sickening disease you hate, and comfort eating to make yourself feel better.

 

Its never as clear as X causes Y just because there's correlation in a random pile of questions asked

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Facebook Vandalism

 

COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stephen Conroy has demanded social networking giant Facebook detail how it will prevent cyber-vandalism in the wake of the defacing of an online memorial site for 12-year-old school stabbing victim Elliott Fletcher.

 

Senator Conroy's blast came as Facebook, in its first public comments since Monday night's attack on the website, defended its reliance on users to report offensive material before taking action.

 

Speculation grew yesterday that members of the notorious 4chan website -- which spawned the protest group Anonymous, accused of attacking government websites to protest censorship last week -- were responsible for the cyber outrage.

 

Facebook refused to respond to Senator Conroy's criticisms, but the social networking company broke its silence on the incident -- although through communications and public policy director Debbie Frost and not the head of its Australian office, Paul Borrud.

 

"Facebook is highly self-regulating and users can, and do, report content that they find questionable or offensive," Ms Frost said.

 

"In the tragic case of Elliott Fletcher's memorial groups, vandals had posted vulgar and pornographic material. We responded to reports by users as well as to direct contact from law enforcement and have removed the groups and disabled the accounts of the people responsible."

The Brisbane schoolboy was allegedly stabbed to death by a 13-year-old classmate in the toilets at Catholic boys school St Patrick's College on Monday.

 

That afternoon, friends set up a memorial Facebook page called RIP Elliott Fletcher, which attracted several thousand members.

 

Queensland police contacted Facebook in Australia and the company's US headquarters and the site was removed early on Tuesday morning after it was defaced by pornography.

 

Senator Conroy, whose plan to introduce an internet filter to block offensive online content has sparked controversy and protests in cyberspace, said he was horrified by the incident.

 

"What it showed was that some people will stoop to any level of abuse," Senator Conroy said. "The sorts of images that were put up on the site were truly horrific.

 

"I think there is a situation where people take Facebook with an enormous amount of trust and they've got to clearly explain what went wrong with their security systems, how this was able to happen (and) importantly, how they're going to ensure that this doesn't happen again."

 

Ms Frost said Facebook employed a team to "take quick action to respond to reports (of inappropriate content), remove the content and either warn or disable the accounts of those responsible".

 

A service for Elliott will be held at St Patrick's College today.

 

The 13-year-old boy charged with his murder has been remanded in custody.

Posted (edited)

No, not at all. The vandalism of the memorial site was not part of the campaign against the australian internet censorship. The actual campaign was an attack on the government to get attention and send a message, followed up by a series of IRL protests in front of major australian government buildings, including embassies on an international level. The attacks on the site mentioned in the article were not organized by the same people, and the organizers of the actual campaign were against the mentioned vandalism. The vandalism was caused by a group that's just doing stuff "for the lols" rather than actually trying to do something about censorship.

 

Also Senator Conroy is a censorist, and against human rights, and anything he says should not be taken seriously.

Edited by Emasher
Posted
No, not at all. The vandalism of the memorial site was not part of the campaign against the australian internet censorship. The actual campaign was an attack on the government to get attention and send a message, followed up by a series of IRL protests in front of major australian government buildings, including embassies on an international level. The attacks on the site mentioned in the article were not organized by the same people, and the organizers of the actual campaign were against the mentioned vandalism. The vandalism was caused by a group that's just doing stuff "for the lols" rather than actually trying to do something about censorship.

 

Also Senator Conroy is a censorist, and against human rights, and anything he says should not be taken seriously.

Then why are the two cases mentioned in the same article. (Granted, I only skimmed it.)


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