What Does MySpace’s Child-Protection Deal Mean for Facebook, Bebo, and Google?
Erick Schonfeld
28 comments »
Today’s agreement between MySpace and nearly all the states attorneys general to bulk up protections against sexual predators will no doubt have spillover effects on other social networks as well. No social network can afford to look like it is lagging in this area and will do whatever it can to be at par with emerging industry norms in this area.
In fact, not long after I originally posted about the MySpace deal earlier today, I received the following statement from Facebook:
Facebook has always created an inhospitable environment for predators by limiting access to users’ personal information based on real-world social connections. We have led the way in our partnership with the New York Attorney General and continue our involvement with the Attorneys General of all states and other law enforcement agencies to keep children safe from those who would do them harm. We are happy to work further with the states to develop and deploy strategies to protect kids online.
I am pretty sure that not only Facebook, but also Bebo and Google, will do whatever is necessary to fight sexual predators. With that in mind, here specifically is where Facebook, Bebo and Orkut (i.e., Google) are now lagging MySpace in protections for younger users, and where they may have to spend money to catch up:
Update: See clarifications/corrections from Facebook below in italics:
1. IMAGE AND VIDEO REVIEW
MySpace proactively reviews videos and images for pornographic and sexually inappropriate content. Humans look at every image and banned images are digitally fingerprinted to prevent them from being uploaded again.
Facebook and Bebo only ban inappropriate images and video that are reported by users. Orkut doesn’t even do that.
Facebook has automated examination working on video, but they find that reports work extraordinarily well in removing inappropriate content quickly – for both images and video. They have always had report links, which MySpace was forced to add under this agreement.
2. GROUPS REVIEW
MySpace monitors group discussions for predatory content.
Facebook and Bebo regulate only reported incidents. Orkut does not review group discussions.
Re: Groups, Facebook has algorithmic monitoring for inappropriate names/themes and a variety of technical tools that automatically cull them.
3. SEX OFFENDER DATABASE
MySpace helped develop and fund a database of registered sex offenders and deletes the accounts of members who are registered sex ofenders.
Facebook, Bebo, and Orkut do not have a policy of automatically removing registered sex offenders.
Facebook has a policy of removing convicted sex offenders, and has a proposal to do real-time checks of official state databases pending with the Attorneys General for nearly a year.
4. AGE LIMIT ENFORCEMENT
MySpace algorithmically searches for underage members and deletes their accounts.
Facebook and Bebo are more reactive in their underage account deletion policies. Orkut does not enforce any age limits.
On age checks, users under 18 years of age are required to designate a high-school network and Facebook places a cookie blocking site access on the browser of anyone who attempts to sign up with an under-13 birth date.
5. “FRIEND” PROTECTION FOR YOUNGER USERS
On MySpace, older users cannot contact underage users without first knowing their e-mail and full name.
On Facebook, Bebo, And Orkut, anyone can “friend” anyone else.
Facebook also separates under-18 profiles in networks outside of schools, limits visibility to only under-18s within that network by default, and provides settings to restrict visibility and searchability even further.
There is no guarantee that anyone is being honest in the information they have on their profile
Look at the small controversy of the reported versus real age of MySpace founder
I think having a human look at every single picture uploaded is ridiculous and over kill. If it that bad it will most likely get reported shortly after upload. I forgot how many photos were uploaded to Facebook a month but the numbers were outstanding. No way could all those be manually looked at.
Don’t get my wrong, it is good MySpace is putting these features into place. But at the end of the day I think Facebook is less of a predator haven because existing features they have had in place.
It’s the duty of all social networking sites to do the best they can to protect children from sexual predators.
on our site we have around 12M photos uploaded (121M served yesterday) and they’ve been policed/moderated by the community since day one. of course, our age limit is 18+ (i can’t speak for anyone else, but i don’t want to hang out with kids) which helps keep out the sickos looking for youngsters.
as has been mentioned before, i hope that these sorts of things don’t make parents lazy. kids should be educated about what to do online, just as they are in school about not taking candy or rides from strangers.
-mike
Other social networks will have more pressure to comply with stricter rules in order to continue to operate without any problems from outside sources. Facebook has its own problems right now with beacon, inflated valuation, data mining and overall creepiness.
Google and Bebo, I think, will quickly step up and ensure safety by implementing new restrictions.
Great to see this.
Awareness and publicity about these heanous crimes can only help. About time.
More policing is needed on the web. I think strong advertising such as banners etc might help drilling some of the dangers of the web into young peoples heads.
Like to see how google takes this on.
Meh, MySpace is just over run with predators. One reason I never made one. Oh, and the fact that it just is full of spam and what not.
Facebook is where its at!
The pictures being reviewed is over kill, and people (especially predators) will always find a work around.
*Dugg*
(that would totally be my sig if we could have them! Digg.Com is amazing! Almost as good as Tech Crunch!)
This isn’t a question of guarentees or child safety, for the big social networks it is about what Erick suggested in his story about — making it look like each social network is complying and enforcing these rules to minimize bad PR and lawsuits in the future.
Sad, isn’t it?
” what about the children? ”
uhh — does anyone actually still care about myspace?
@Andy
I guess myspace thinks predators still do, and I think myspace should some praise.
I can hardly wait until a it’s decided in the interest of not offending anyone that any picture of a woman not completely covered from head to toe is “inappropriate” and therefore banned.
From this post it would appear like Orkut doesn’t do anything at all. Yes, I think myspace deserves praise on their efforts on this front.
These social networking sites are responsible for the safety of the young. They have to do whatever is in their power to live up to that responsibility. Having said that there is only so much they can do.
Is it just me, or are items No 3 and No 4 on the list of protections completely useless because they rely on information submitted by the user to be truthful?
You can change your email address, your user name, your IP Address through proxies and delete your cookies.
Facebook et al need to look towards Device Intelligence technologies that ecommerce vendors and banks have migrated towards in order to fingerprint the machines of known offenders.
It shows that Myspace is the best social networking site in my eyes. They keep adapting and evolving with the needs of it’s user’s. I’ve never really liked Facebook. You never know where your information is going.
It is not only the the duty of all social networking sites to do the best they can to protect children from sexual predators but also the parents and families. How many times do you wonder where were the parents and why aren’t they watching over their children.
What people fail to mention in stories like these is that most sexual abuse is committed by relatives, stepfathers, close friends, trusted authority figures (priests, youth leaders) etc. Not by people on MySpace or in chatrooms or driving round in windowless vans. Grooming obviously goes on, and in a few cases leads to actual abuse, but in terms of “bad things that can happen to children” it’s more emotive than actually significant. Children are in far more danger on the pavement or in the passenger seat of their mum’s SUV than on MySpace.
Obviously parents should monitor their children’s Internet usage, but in general this will probably save between zero and one children from actual abuse. At best this is a PR boost for MySpace and at worst a waste of time and money. For its part the government gets an excuse to stick its nose in to the web community and nose around while bleating “won’t somebody think of teh children”.
In order to let listen to these histories we must be pending of which our children do, to know its friends and knowledge to whom they are related.
@14, I’d argue that it’s parents’ (and schools’ if that’s where the kids are accessing the Internet) responsibility to protect children. Internet != babysitter. I do think it’s a great thing that social networks are taking these steps, but it’s parents’ responsibility. That would be like saying it’s the responsibility of a mall owner to make sure that all of the 10-year-olds left at the mall by their parents are safe or that the phone company is responsible for the content of the calls that children make. No, 10-year-old children shouldn’t be at the mall unsupervised, and parents should know who their kids are on the phone with.
But once again, these are great things. I think another step that could be taken is to allow parents to have a backdoor password to their kids’ accounts so that they could easily monitor any private communication that their kids are having instead of just being able to see what is posted publicly.
good post Erick!! I wouldn’t mind if you dug up some more minutia on this topic and gave us a graphical metric of: “The websites that care about your kids (and some that want to help people hurt them).” even though that’s more of a Duncan-esque title… hehehe… you get the idea.
this is a serious matter and something i’d like to see given more attention (as a parent of 3)… lord knows i loathe myspace but i give them props for leading the way, preempting yet ANOTHER issue… (this is not the first time they’ve foreseen things…) child privacy and protection issues are going to be huge this year. Mark my words. MySpace will be given credit in the press for the decisions they made BEFORE the fireball started rolling (their actions might even start the ball, for that matter… they didn’t create the ball, but they are showing they are more than willing to give the ball a heavy push down the hill.)
p.s. @ #8… LOL @ facebook… facebook is so last year… they can join microsoft… by that i mean, the living dead. (Dead in the water with a crap business, but enough money to keep the machines going for too long.) Zuckerberg is just smart enough to be dangerous to himself… hehehe, he cannot run that company efficiently as he has proven time and again… and he’s also proven that he has no business being interviewed on 60 minutes… lol.
D.P. @#20 I’d argue that the COPPA Act is law… so clearly the government is not above forcing websites to place protections in place… lets not forget what happened to Zanga a while back with their $1M fine for failing to validate ages from brithdays provided. Ouch.
I use Myspace on a regular basis and am very happy to know that they look at everything! It makes me feel a little safer. But I basically go by the rule to not really talk to anybody I don’t know.
those measures won’t stop a single pedophile
I disagree that it’s MySpace’s responsiblity to protect the kids, but I also think parents could use some peace of mind and perhaps a break. I for one, am very watchful of my 15-year old son, but I cannot be sure of everything all of the time.
There is patent pending technology that’s available now, that quickly confirms the age and identity of individuals seeking membership in social networking sites. My husband and his business partners created it. We hope MySpace, Facebook and the like will accept our requests to meet with them soon.
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