Facebook Agrees To User Safety Plan

Facebook has reached an agreement with the attorneys general of 49 states and the District of Columbia to develop and enhance controls to protect minors from inappropriate content. This follows a similar commitment from MySpace several months ago. The lone holdout in each case was Texas. News.com notes: "In the deal, the social network has agreed to develop age verification technology, send warning messages when an under-18 user may be giving personal information to an unknown adult, restrict the ability for people to change their ages on the site, and keep abreast of inappropriate content and harassment on the site. While the agreement is with U.S. state authorities, Kelly said that the tools deployed will apply to Facebook's international users as well. More than half of the site's 70 million users are outside the U.S."

Comments

For God's sake

[Rik Sweeney]

Maybe Facebook should also be made to come round to people's houses and teach them how to wipe their arses properly.

While Facebook might have to provide some responsibility, the 49 states and Columbia should actually tell the PARENTS to supervise their child's usage of the internet.

Re:For God's sake

[Grimbleton]

I agree. I'm sick and tired of the government stepping in where they shouldn't. Aw, little Susy sent out naked pictures to her friends? Great, let's educate her and her parents, not hold the service she used to perform an action with responsible. Where's the personal responsibility these days?

Re:For God's sake

[swillden]

While Facebook might have to provide some responsibility, the 49 states and Columbia should actually tell the PARENTS to supervise their child's usage of the internet.

I'd like to see them implement parental supervision features, so that I can easily review what my kids are doing.

The idea that parents should actively supervise and participate in their children's Internet usage SOUNDS good, but in practice it means two things: I have to spend all of my free time watching what my kids do on the net (leaving me no time for slashdot!), and I have to severely limit their Internet usage.

This is especially problematic for parents with more than one or two children. I have four (ages 6 through 14), all of whom spend a significant time on the net. I limit them to 90 minutes per day of computer time, including school work, and while many people consider that excessively restrictive, it would still mean that I have to spend six hours per day watching them compute. That's obviously not practical.

There are various workarounds, of course. For example, I use remote desktop tools (VNC, actually, since their computers run Ubuntu) to spot check what they're doing from my own computer; I look at their browser histories; and I require them to use the e-mail accounts I set up for them, and which automatically forward me copies of everything they receive (in practice, their e-mail volume is too high for me to monitor, so I have filters that automatically shuffle their mail off to folders, which I spot-check).

None of this is hidden from them, BTW. They're well aware that Mom and Dad have access to all of this -- and probably believe we have access to stuff that we don't.

Another thing that helps is that the computers are in public areas of the house, and we encourage tattling. That only helps with overt stuff ("Moommmm, Ethan is watching Youtube videos with bad woooorrrdss!" -- if you've spent much time around kids I'm sure you can imagine the exact tone). More subtle things, like kids giving away too much personal information in chat rooms are harder. We've taught them about the issues, and we mostly ban chatting at all, except with RL friends, but it's hard to convince kids to take those things seriously.

This all works to some degree, but it's a big workload for my wife and I, and it's incomplete. Browser history tells you what sites they visit, but not what they do on those sites, and sites like myspace and facebook offer a wide variety of activities, some of which are acceptable and some of which are not. I don't really have a good way of knowing what they're doing without watching, either directly or via VNC.

The bottom line is that supervising your kids' Internet usage sounds simple in theory, but it's pretty darned hard to do effectively in practice, even for a nerd like me. The average parent really has no option beyond watching over their shoulders.

Re:Radical solution:

[FiestaFan]

Yes, and the same with TV and radio.

Re:Radical solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

HOW exactly was THIS modded UP?! I mean WHAT?! Even as AC, I am shocked.

Oh sure, I am 18 now and working as search engine optimizer and PHP coder. Learning these skills from library, with years old books, etc. without the access to internet would have been kinda... impossible? People don't NEED the internet and neither they NEED moder medicine. Maybe we should also make medicine illegal for people under 18 because some can become drug addicts.

Re:beginning of the end?

[FiestaFan]

one way to address this is to not allow unverified people to network with minors (what adults really would, anyway, unless they're spying on them or, well, the pedophiles this system is trying to address). What about someone who is 18 sending a message to someone who is 17? Or a grandmother sending her 13 year old granddaughter a message? Or a myriad of other circumstances?

Lets nationalize the age of consent.

[elucido]

Lets solve this problem once and for all and come up with ONE age of consent. One age which applies to all US territories and the internet, so that adults can know when they are breaking the law.

To have no age of consent is equal to having the drinking age be different in every state and having some states have bars with minors in them and other states having bars set to be over 21.

You cannot govern this way.

Sound Bite Security

[arthurpaliden]

Sounds good and does absolutly nothing. The best was to keep children safe on the internet is called ... wait for it ... PARENTING. So put the household computer in a high traffic area by the kitchen and take and interest in what your kids are doing.

GoodLuckWithThat

[keirre23hu]

Because noone could ever get another free email from Yahoo/MSN/Google/RediffMail/DMX/insert free email provider here and register for a new account if they are operating under nefarious purposes, you know, like spammers do.

Age verification technology - how will this work without requiring giving more personal information to facebook, who will then use it to further tail advertisements, could you imagine if they had your postal address?

The only part that makes sense is alerting when minors send information to adults.... but to do that it means monitoring personal communication without a warrant, and how do they really _know_ the child and adult know each other in a non-threatening way, and on the other side, how do they know that they arent relatives or have some other benign relationship... The solution is for parents to be parents and stop letting the computer/tv/playstation/wii parent your kids for you... nobody forced you to become a parent, take some responsibility.

"In the deal, the social network has agreed to develop age verification technology, send warning messages when an under-18 user may be giving personal information to an unknown adult, restrict the ability for people to change their ages on the site, and keep abreast of inappropriate content and harassment on the site. While the agreement is with U.S. state authorities, Kelly said that the tools deployed will apply to Facebook's international users as well. More than half of the site's 70 million users are outside the U.S."

Re:Radical solution:

[Nathrael]

Yeah, right. Because a small minority is unable to use something properly, outlaw it for all others as well. Make all people suffer because some people made errors. With the same mentality, pretty much everything should be outlawed, since you can always find a way to misuse something.

Re:Radical solution:

[Wavebreak]

There's such a thing as being overprotective, and this is it.

Parents are the issue!

[Droidism]

Facebook IS the issue. It's Never the parents. All parents are perfect with the upbringing of their child. point the finger at... media. gta. facebook.

Re:Radical solution:

[digitig]

Why not just outlaw internet use for those under 18? Before you laugh or mod me troll, hear me out: Youngsters don't need the internet to do research as they could go to a library and do their research the old-fashioned way. Youngsters have cell phones and text messaging, and if they don't have that then they could play sports or participate in a myriad of activities for social bonding. Because growing up is about learning to live in the adult world. If we keep kids wrapped in cotton-wool and safe from the world until their 18th birthday, when you turn them loose they just won't be able to deal with what they encounter. Parenting, education and so on are largely about getting the kids used to the risks of real life, in a controlled way. Yes, that has its own risks -- kids will have to be exposed to the dangers of the real world in order to learn to cope, and sometimes they will fail to cope. So the risks need to be managed and controlled, but we must be aware that if we eliminate risk kids won't learn to deal with it. There will be tragedies, but that's because life is dangerous, not because we've under-legislated.