ABSTRACT

The failure of the ideal of complete freedom in cyberspace was an early phenomenon. In the mid-1970s, Allucquère Rosanne Stone writes, “the age of surveillance and social control arrived for the electronic virtual community” (Stone 1991: 91). As Stone describes, the CommuniTree computerized bulletin board was intended to be a forum for intellectual and spiritual discussion among adults. It was an environment where censorship was censured and each user’s privacy was both respected and guaranteed by the system’s administrators. The community it fostered collapsed under the onslaught of messages, often obscene, posted by the first generation of adolescent school children with personal computers and modems. In the wake of what one participant called the “consequences of free expression” technical means were introduced to enable the system’s administrators to monitor users’ activities and censor “inappropriate” messages (Stone 1991). As Stone comments, such measures have proved to be necessary concessions to the need to maintain order in virtual communities. This chapter examines the mechanisms for social control which have developed on a type of virtual community known as MUD.