Infocult writes about a report from ScanDefender which shows that 80% of the blogosphere contains “potentially offensive content,” the majority of the medium is seen as threatening. This is the typical kind of scare tactics which is just annoying. What is it that is offensive? According to ScanDefender’s definition this is widely described as “rang[ing] from adult language to pornographic images”.
The focus of the report is on malware but it does find a small space to invoke the dangers of the blogosphere (download the report here). The whole point of the 80% offensive content seems to be only there to create a catchy headline.
Naturally there is offensive content on the Internet and also in blogs. But define your terms! What is offensive? To whom? By which objective standards? The blogosphere is huge so how did you arrive at 80%? etc, etc… The methodological questions are too many to list. Unfortunately this validity of claims such as these are not questioned – people seem to prefer the snappy headlines.
I find reports such as this offensive…