« The tagging culture war |
Main
| Understanding true decentralisation - the microformat model »
July 23, 2005
social networks and drug networks
Posted by danah boyd
Rule #1 for studying social culture: pay attention to the sex and drugs.
When it was reported that Orkut is being used as a drug networking tool in Brazil, my immediate response was duh.
I have interviewed subjects who distributed cocaine in Baltimore via Friendster. (To my knowledge, they were never caught which makes it different than the situation with Orkut.) Other subjects have told me ways to find drugs on Tribe.net and MySpace. Obviously, i am not willing to disclose how or who. But this is definitely not unique to Orkut nor to social networking in general. For example, in college, people used to buy drugs on eBay.
Give people the ability to distribute information and they will distribute drugs. Tis just as obvious as if you give people access to attractive people, they will date. So, i find it very entertaining that people get up in arms about this.
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: social software
- RELATED ENTRIES
- › Spolsky on Blog Comments: Scale matters
- › "The internet's output is data, but its product is freedom"
- › Andrew Keen: Rescuing 'Luddite' from the Luddites
- › knowledge access as a public good
- › viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
- › Gorman, redux: The Siren Song of the Internet
- › Mis-understanding Fred Wilson's 'Age and Entrepreneurship' argument
- › The Future Belongs to Those Who Take The Present For Granted: A return to Fred Wilson's "age question"
TrackBack URL:
http://www.corante.com/cgi-bin/mt/teriore.fcgi/1948.
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference social networks and drug networks: