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Facebook Agrees To User Safety Plan

Posted by Soulskill on from the i'm-like-totally-18 dept.

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."

2 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. beginning of the end? by mrcdeckard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    before i get modded to hell, i'm usually not a doomsdayer.

    however, i think this may be the point that we have all been dreading since the internet began -- the day we have to provide *real* identification to get access to casual (non commerce) sites.

    i guess the glass-half-full part of me is wondering how facebook can verify age without compromising anonymity (and convenience for that matter).

    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). although this is a bit ageist in that this would require minors to provide real id. this doesn't actually address the issue, only postpones full-compliance to future generations. . .

    so, yeah. once this becomes commonplace (ie. when the infrastructure is in place), i can see the day when we all have to show our (real) ID at the door of every site we go to.

    often it occurs to me that i will be looking back to these days and think, "wow, those were the days when the internet was free," as i hold my nationalIDcard up to the computer screen to be scanned . . .

    mr c

    --
    "Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
  2. Sounds like a good idea to me. by elucido · · Score: 4, Interesting


    In my opinion, I see no reason for minors to be using the same social networking services as adults, and in my opinion if they are under 15 they shouldn't be on social networking sites at all.

    Can anything good come from letting minors access the adult oriented internet? We don't let them into clubs and bars, so why Myspace and Facebook?