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Friday, April 16, 2010

What Facebook does with abuse reports

The head of Facebook's international law enforcement group, Max Kelly, Friday revealed more details than I've seen in the news media on how the site detects bad behavior and content, including criminal activity. On the prevention side, The Guardian reports, "Facebook has developed sophisticated algorithms to monitor its users and detect inappropriate and predatory behaviour, bolstering its latest raft of initiatives to improve the safety of its users." For details on what FB does about that behavior, please see the article, which includes pushback from CEOP but also signs of momentum toward a working rather than adversarial relationship. Only the former will help remove layers and redundancies in abuse reporting, as well as help educate the public on where and how to report what. Historians could probably tell us that it took time for the public to know what to report to 911/999 and, for example, what to report to school authorities, and here the system and education will need to be multinational and multicultural. This is a followup to my post last week about the "panic button" problem.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Angela Perry said...

I'm glad that Facebook is making reporting easier. MySpace also seems to be responding to the need.

Twitter, on the other hand, has absolutely no controls in place. I reported an adult male tweeting sexual things to a 12-year-old several months back. Twitter's response? "We don't get involved in personal disputes."

And yes, he's still online with the same account. He no longer tweets inappropriately in public; instead, he asks the little girls who follow him to direct message him.

12:33 PM  
Blogger Anne said...

Thanks for your comment, Morgan. MySpace has had very solid systems in place for a long time. As for Twitter, wow, their response is REALLY concerning. If you have or can point to a record of those tweets (or at least the account screenname of this user), I strongly suggest that you share that info with CyberTipline(.com), which you can do online or via their 800 no. (1800THE LOST). If there's a risk there, they can get a subpoena to Twitter that it would have to respond to. Tx again.

12:43 PM  

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