Well, it’s finally arrived!  After much heated debate and enormous media pressure from child safety advocates, government and citizens in the UK, they now have a Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) “panic button” or tab installation application for teens in the UK to use, purportedly to “stop” paedophiles and cyberbullies. Jim Gamble who heads the project and who’s company, or partnership with the UK government (?) (unsure on how CEOP was created or how its funded) created the Facebook application introduced yesterday was quoted in November of 2009 as saying “Facebook and Myspace didn’t do enough to stop paedophiles and cyberbullies”. Jim arguably may have had a valid point to make based on a few terrible cases where known predators groomed, lured and sadly murdered teens contacted specifically via Facebook.

However, the essential part missing from Jim Gambles positioning is the Facebook data. The cases that end in a homicide while very disturbing are relatively rare occurrences but some bigger questions remain about Facebook’s policies and lack of information sharing. Facebook data is available for usage statistics but i have yet to locate anything released from the company itself related to safety and complaints on their platform. Let’s ask ourselves this; Where is the open data from Facebook that allows child protection advocates, police IT experts and caring citizens to view exactly just how many reports of inappropriate contact made their way to the through the Facebook abuse reporting system? Also, where is the transparency in data availability so that professionals can gage the true scope of the ongoing problem in order to assist with intelligent solutions?

As an example of moving in the right direction with regards to the release of platform data to their users, I noticed that Google released in April of this year six months worth of data that illustrated the amount of “requests from authorities” that had been made to remove content from its servers or provide information about users of their services or products. Challenging Mark Zuckerberg and his company Facebook to do the same Is worth a mention. After all brand management and PR is secondary to responsible internet citizenship, right?  I would request Mr Zuckerberg to take it one step further and categorize the data requests by law enforcement and also, and importantly so release data about user complaints based on the nature of the complaints.

Sarah Perez wrote in a recent write up at Read Write Web that “Facebook will also promote the button to it’s youngest users by way of prominent advertisements” That’s fine for Facebook and kudos to them for advertising on their own networks something that is not their own internal solution to the issue. Think of this; what if that button becomes the beacon and predators will only look for those without the button? You see we know that certain types of sexual deviants have high recidivism rates, that is to say that once they perpetrate a sexual crime that it is likely to be followed by same according to reams of well conduced research in this area. Sexual offenders have been shown to be highly skilled in their adaptations in order to continue offending, are we thus helping them avoid detection by the highly visible button as well? Could the discussion have been had about “hiding the button” on profiles but have them available to the users?

Here are some questions or thoughts I considered and jotted down when I first heard about the Facebook panic button and thought it would be a part of their system, lets see if with this new CEOP application if any of these points still apply:

1) Targeting profile behavior rather then by name and photo will assist in getting around the problem of Fake accounts created by serial predators.

2) Facebook may not wish to install alert system for younger people directly on their system due to legal concerns with the potential for insufficient backend policing of the reports.  Would this flow be properly and maintained in a timely fashion?  Predator->User->button->FB system/comms->Police? Here is a Scenario, child presses Facebook button but the Facebook system is slow, not responsive, not well designed, staff lose track and are not trained to recognize imminent threats and teen is contacted and murdered by another user, who is liable?

3) Alert tools are only as good as the Facebook communications with police are. I would like to hear back from law enforcement officials on their comparative experiences when asking certain social media platforms for information or if they do receive and how many unsolicited reports from Facebook or other platforms regarding potential threats?

4) Remembering the cautionary tale about putting the safety of kids in a large corporations hands.  Facebook is only as effective as their ability to ascertain risk and for their system to respond to such threats. There is no doubt that parents will always be the first line of defense.

I do also wonder if having the external button application will mean Facebook will still continue to monitor serious concerns by teens in the UK or if it will all go to CEOP by way of manual reports? Do they have an agreement here or is it only via the new application tab? I am waiting to hear back from CEOP on this question and will post what i find out for our readers.

With all of this said not knowing the scope of the problem on Facebook related to grooming and predator behavior due to lack of data releases by Facebook keeps me asking the harder questions. I do of course hope the CEOP button will be a successful mechanism to assist in protecting children and teens in the UK but do ask that people continue teaching their children about the online risks and to not allow technology to “babysit” our  precious children.

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Tags: CEOP, child safety, Facebook, panic button

This entry was posted on July 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Community relations, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.