Netizens of the world: Unite and take over

There was a rallying call at the International Journalism Festival yesterday for the media to report more on the goings on within social networks such as Facebook.

During a panel entitled 'Netizens of the world unite', Peter Ludlow - an academic who has written extensively about social media and the likes of Second Life - said the media needed to take a more grown up approach to reporting on Facebook and Twitter.

The panel discussion presented the case where large corporations, such as Google, were quashing the upload of controversial material to websites such as Youtube. An Italian journalist had recorded extracts of a radio station in the North of the country which was aligned to a right-wing movement. He had posted these on Youtube but found he was being done for violation of their terms - and was nearly banned completely from the network. Was it right for Google to restrict his expression and ability to post controversial material?

Good points were made about how these big private companies were setting conditions where users gave everything away to them - copyright, identity, privacy and there was little users could do about it.

One Italian journalist gave the example of how if he has a complaint about his milkman he can go to Trading Standards or the Environmental health and something can be done about it. But with social networks, who regulates? And do we want anyone to regulate?

Ludlow also talked about the need for education on how to use social media and the internet better. But who would do this? Would it be delivered alongside sex education in schools? There were questions about whether the government should step in and 'break up' large social networks and create open source alternatives. Ludlow made an excellent point, that if you create an open source version no one would go there as the reason you're on Facebook is because all your friends are there.

You also have to think, with the challenges facing governments and the cuts in public spending - can they justify getting involved in social networks which a) all their citizens are not on and b) they just might not have the resources to effectively police.

Overall the discussion made me think about our media use of Facebook. We use it to promote our brands, to rip pictures of people and generally to use it as a way of finding stories. But is there a place for a consumer watchdog role for the media? We've seen with mobile phone companies, utilities etc we monitor price changes closely and report on people who get ripped off - challenging the likes of EDF and Virgin Media to explain their policies and prices. But how much do we challenge Facebook and will this change once the shine wears off?