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UK Gov't Wants Facebook To Feature Child Safety Button
judgecorp writes "Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, has said that UK government ministers are 'taking action' to get Facebook to add a British child protection button (called CEOP) to its site. The move comes after the UK's Daily Mail withdrew allegations that teenagers on Facebook are continually pestered — though Facebook is still considering suing the paper. The campaign apparently ignores Facebook's assertion that it already has better child protection in place and the CEOP button would be limited to the UK."
Harridan Harperson can suck my cock.
Since its Harriet Harman involved I expect that the pressing of the button will result in the immediate rounding up of all males over 12 involved in the conversation for incarceration without trial. And it obviously won't matter what was said, because it will be the "emotion affect" on the kid pressing the button that counts, not the actual words.
We already have bad experience with child protection buttons, and I seriously doubt that this one will do more good than harm. What's happened to good old parenting?
Ezekiel 23:20
...that got done by the police for driving without due care and attention?
So presumably Facebook is a danger to kids whilst her talking on a mobile phone while driving is safe for kids who could be out in the street at the time?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Allowing Children on the internet to quickly and easily label anyone they like a child abuser. What could possibly go wrong?
It gets better though, if you are ever accused of child abuse, it goes on record and will be returned whenever an employer does a background check. Doesn't matter if the allegations are complete rubbish and everyone acknowledges this. It'll still haunt you for life.
To top it all off, there's a condition that the government can put on your record making the information on your background check confidential to anyone. Including yourself. You can fail a background check and never you have failed one. The employer can't tell you you've failed, so if there's a mistake on your background check, it is impossible to get it remedied and your life is basically ruined.
Frankly this isn't a shock given our current government's tracks record.
- Licence to take kids to football practice
- Licence to own a dog (and third party liability insurance)
- CCTV Cameras on every street corner
- An "equality opportunity" amendment which promotes racist and sexist hiring (what the hell?)
- Virtual strip search at every airport
- ID Cards
- et al
Being extremely liberal is great. But some days I wish the UK had a little more of the things American conservatives love (e.g. Personal Freedom, less interference).
The following list of things should not be considered as trustworthy babysitters and are no substitute for proper parenting skills:
An Internet connected PC
A box of fireworks
A games console
A set of throwing knives
Now kindly stop with trying to fulfill your lives by shitting out more kids that you're not prepared to be responsible for and expecting the rest of us to make concessions for them.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
We respect your concerns about child safety, so we've installed a Child Safety Button for our younger users. It's a big "X" located in the upper-right corner of Facebook. Macs don't use X technology, so we built a red button for their Facebook instead. We're pretty sure those are the only two Facebooks anyone uses.
You could argue that the UK government is just trying to interfere in how a private non-uk business runs its site, but then again, if you leave it to private industry, actors claiming to be doctors would be telling you that smoking is healthy. Private industry does have a reputation for ignoring the welfare of its customers for the sake of profits.
Just as car makers prefered killing a few customers over the message that cars could be dangerous by installing seatbelts, facebook hardly wants to carry the message that social networking is not all fun and games to strongly.
From what I know of the warning button, it is just a link to a site where you can get advice about how to stay safe. So fairly similar to a "smoking can kill you" sticker. The truly stupid won't read it, but who knows, it might work and what is the harm?
Yeah, yeah, parents should tell their kids. Except a lot of parents don't have a clue about what their kids are up to. They did not grow up with the internet, don't know the capabilities. Kids are incredibly stupid if you let them, but then kids are also famous for not reading warnings anyway.
But why is facebook so opposed to it? Does it have a serious complaint, or is it seatbelts all over again? Yeah the summary says that facebook claims their own warnings are good enough. Right... and why should we take their word for it? They would hardly say "we don't want the button and our own systems suck because we don't give a shit". They got a reason not to want the button, and I need a little bit more then obvious marketing speech to see why. Because I can see a very simple reason why they really don't want it. It might scare people of using their service.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There already is such a button on every computer. It's more widely known as the power button.
If you're a British politician, you automatically go on "Arsebook".
If you're a parent without parental responsibility, your "Facebook" account gets transferred to "Arsebook".
And if you've queued up at midnight for a computer game or an iPhone, you go into the "Arsebook" "What A Total Arse" section.
That'll soon learn them...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Good parenting is a better option.
Having a button in any type of chat application which either party can flag a conversation with is so interfering with a UI that you all hate the idea?
I don't have kids, and I cannot think of anything better then good parenting but I also cannot see any harm adding a simple for the sole purpose of making it easier to handle things such as bots, scammers, predators etc.
The only problem I can really see is misuse of the button when an ex-girlfriend decides she wants to fuck with her ex-boyfriend in a malicious manner.
I suppose filtering and priority detection can be implemented to possibly eliminate false positives etc.
She would probably save the girl children given half a chance
If you're a British politician, you automatically go on "Arsebook".
Most British politicians could not distinguish this from Elbowbook.
The paper got a story from a guy who did a quick-and-dirty unpublished study on how quickly they were approached on a different site entirely, the DM ghostwrote it into a different story entirely about Facebook, ignored the original author's corrections, and put it up on the front page.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The button is not called CEOP. CEOP is the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. The button is apparently called "CLICKCEOP", but is mostly referred to as the "paedophile panic" button in the press or simply the "button" on the CEOP site.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It is Harriot Harman who argues that being drunk is no defence for men accused of rape (fair enough)... but strangely, she also argues that woman cannot be held to have 'consented' if they are drunk.
She was also responsible for the repeal of the defence in murder cases of 'provocation', which was a defence used primarily by men (again, fair enough). Strange then that at the same time, Harriot brought in a new defence which allowed abused women to claim long term abuse by the husband, as a defence if they then murdered their partner - rather than, say, leave them.
She goes on to argue that the low conviction rate of alleged rapists is proof, in itself, that too many men are getting away with rape (might be true), but fails to acknowledge the alternative explanation, that too many false allegations of rape are being submitted by women.
Harriot is one awful tub of man hating menopausal angst.
The most dangerous phrase ever uttered by society "There ought to be a law..." and I'm a lawyer. This shit is just out of hand.
It's a good thing George Carlin is dead, cause this would kill him. I just keep replaying his stand up bit in my head.
Daintywoman: Think of the children! Think of the children! Think of th...
George: Fuck the Children! (And this is Mr. Conductor Talking)
You basically only have to walk down the street with your ears open.
Back when I were a lad, it was routine to insult kids who were not of your group, fatty, lanky, ginger, smelly, stinky, etc.
Today the default insult is "paedo"
I've lost count of the number of times I have seen teenagers and younger, of both sexes, respond to an adult who tells them off for something, eg "stop fucking around with my car" with chants of "paedo!"
Teachers in UK schools essentially live in fear of one of the kids responding to being told off for setting fire to little johnny in 2A with an accusation of violence or sexual assault being made against the teacher.
You won't find a small kid who does not already;
a/ own a mobile phone
b/ know the childline and other abuse numbers by heart
We are sowing what we reaped.
I say in all sincerity, there are a LOT of adults today who have learned this lesson so well that they could witness either an adult women or a schoolgirl being gang raped, and simply walk on by, deliberately seeing nothing, as being the only safe option.
http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal