There have been a variety of posts in the private forums of the GPWA website on the merits of engaging in online gaming promotional activities in a social network environment. Such discussion has focused on the fact that children participate in social networks.
Advocates of such promotion have taken the position that social networks are used primarily by those that are not underage and that social networking environments offer safeguards that are greater than those available on the web as a whole, thus providing greater protection than is generally available to children using the web.
Those who express the deepest concern raise issues surrounding the significant number of underage participants in social networks and the fact that it is possible for children to circumvent the protections that are provided by creating accounts based on false information.
This week’s question asks your opinions about what is acceptable in the Facebook social network environment. In order to intelligently answer these questions, one needs to understand a little bit about the Facebook environment since the questions are about a presence for an iGaming portal site on facebook. Generally such a presence can take the form of either a Facebook fan page or a Facebook group.
Casino City is an example of a website that has a fan page on Facebook at the following URL: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Casino-City/7666953178. Fan pages can be available to all users on Facebook, or they can be restricted to facebook users that meet a specified age criteria such as being 18, being a least of drinking age in their geographic location, or being 21. The Casino City fan page currently is only visible to those who are of drinking age in their geographic location.
Another way of establishing a presence on Facebook is through the use of groups. For example, the GPWA has a group on Facebook at the following URL: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6784511126. Groups can be open groups that anyone can join, or closed or secret groups where some or all information about the group is hidden except to those who have been explicitly admitted as group members. The GPWA group on Facebook is an example of an open group.
With this background information, you should select one of the first seven viewpoints listed in the question as the one that most closely reflects your personal view. Then you should select as many of the following seven statements that reflect your personal view about what is OK on Facebook.
Questions can also be asked about legal issues and the desirability of providing links and publicity for actual online gaming sites, and also about offering gaming activities like Texas Holdem Poker on Facebook, and such questions have been asked in the private forums. I'd prefer if we can leave those issues aside in this poll and associated posts and stay focused on the question of promoting iGaming portal sites as it relates to the question of proper ethics with respect to those who are underage.
Michael