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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."

5 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. For God's sake by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    Summation 2
    1. Re:For God's sake by Grimbleton · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

  2. Age of majority by NoobixCube · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've always thought the broad-sweeping American-influenced use of age 18 on the internet is amazingly arrogant and blind. 18 is the arbitrary age of majority in some western cultures. In other western cultures, it's 21. In Japan (and perhaps other Asian countries, though I don't know), it's 20. Age of majority is probably even lower in some countries, and even higher in others.

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    Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
  3. Re:Radical solution: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Lets nationalize the age of consent. by elucido · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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.