MySpace is not Your Space

It is both entertaining and sad how people can be extremely hypocritical.

News Corp. purchased Intermix Media Inc., the owner of MySpace, for $580 million last month, mainly so that Fox Interactive Media can reach the site's 22 million registered users.
MySpace, which launched just two years ago, is currently the most popular social networking site in the world. It makes it easy for people to customize their home pages with personal photos, art, color and music, along with market-revealing lists of favorite activities, books, music and films. Users can get site-wide bulletins, but they mostly communicate with friends or intriguing strangers they've expressly allowed into a network. Bands often use the site to debut their music.

But not everybody is happy:

Nervous members of the wildly popular online social networking spot are blasting its purchase by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., expressing dark fears about the powerful billionaire's alleged motives and the possibility of privacy breaches, monitoring, censorship,— and access fees.
"It's something we're very concerned about," said Scott Swiecki, 34, of Tempe Ariz., who's a member of the MySpace group "Faux News" as well as another group that combines the Murdoch name with an expletive. "There are a lot of counterculture people on MySpace. My concern is Fox will add fees and censor content."

If those are their concerns, that is perfectly legitimate. But it seems that the concerns are based more on the idea that it is Murdoch and Fox, which are not part of the left, than censorship and fees. The worried people on MySpace, which prides itself on allowing people to express themselves, is happy to allow anyone to join - as long as they agree with their views. It is a hypocrisy that the left feels that the right must be shut out because it 'stifles expression'. It is as if it is not okay to stifle expression, unless it's on the right - then it becomes necessary in order to ensure the expressiveness of the left.

But some of the hipsters in the online hangout fear their freewheeling ways, celebrated in naughty notes, brash blogs and provocative photos, won't mesh with the values of Murdoch's media outlets, like Fox News, which they believe are right-wing mouthpieces for the Bush administration.
"I'm opposed to what Rupert Murdoch has done to the media, and I don't want him involved in MySpace," said user Nathan Hall, 26, of Milwaukee.

It's kind of sad, really.