Boyd

In Boyd's analysis of the differences between Myspace and Facebook, and the supposed "white flight" that occurred from Myspace to Facebook, she seems to be altogether too into the idea that racism affects young peoples reasoning for doing this. While it is an interesting cultural fact that white people did migrate to Facebook before many minorities did, it seems to me that Boyd is doing what many people who agree with affirmative action do, and looking for the racism in anything to affect how people think of it. This approach simply does not work in terms of the electronic world due to one simple factor: signing up to Myspace or Facebook has nothing racial involved in the process. It is not like applying to college, or for a job, or for anything else. There is no box that you put "Caucasian" or "African-American" for that precludes you from joining Facebook or Myspace, you simply sign up for it. While the fact remains that Facebook began as a social media website made for college educated students from Harvard, this wasn't because the creator wanted it to be racist: he simply knew the most people from Harvard, and as such that was the most likely place where people joining would be coming from. All good business ideas are helped along by our friends first, and as such Facebook was first joined and promoted by Harvard students and graduates. If Facebook had been invented in the ghetto by a black kid, I have no doubt it would have progressed the exact same way in pulling people from Myspace, and the argument about white flight by Danah Boyd would be invalid. Boyd, in my opinion, needs to take off her own racially profiling glasses and realize that young people for the most part simply go to Myspace and Facebook as a way to talk to friends, not as a way to exclude others.