90,000 sex offenders ejected from MySpace

It may still look horribly ugly, but thanks to measures undertaken by the company, MySpace is at least a moderately safer place to hang out today: The website has canceled the accounts of 90,000 sex offenders and sexual predators.

That number is considerably higher than was previously reported. North Carolina's Attorney General had estimated that a mere 29,000 known predators were trolling the system. MySpace itself had estimated 50,000 offenders at one point.

In addition to the purge, both MySpace and its clean-cut younger brother Facebook are implementing new rules and restrictions on the use of their services in order to keep sex offenders from accessing accounts there. Those rules include better age verification, restrictions against older users searching for minors on the site, and an outright ban on sex offenders from registering in the first place. For its part, Facebook says it's never had a case of a "registered sex offender meeting a minor" through its service. However, the company that provides MySpace's sex offender tracking software says it's found at least 8,000 sex offenders on Facebook. (Facebook disputes those numbers.)

On the other hand, PC World and many others wonder whether the hysteria over sex offenders mingling with others online is overblown, with at least one study suggesting that online bullying and harassment is a far more serious issue which is not getting any real attention. Media reports and TV shows like To Catch a Predator would have us believe that the Internet is filled with nothing but salacious offers for sex delivered by creepy old men to oblivious pre-teen computer users, but real-world reports would indicate the problem is nowhere nearly as severe as the amount of coverage it receives.

It's hard to argue that MySpace and Facebook aren't doing the right thing by being proactive in their attempts to keep predators off their services, but do they risk going too far? Your comments are welcome.