[tyler]

This article is poorly written and flat out wrong. His second example simply shows a public post of his on a public group. His statement "Facebook makes public EVERYTHING about its users via its search API" is just incorrect.

But of course, it's filled with lots of capital letters, so he must be right.

[megaduck]

It doesn't matter that he's wrong. What matters is that the media has gotten a hold of this, and isn't going to let go any time soon.

Facebook is rapidly losing control of the narrative. They need to do some PR damage control quickly, or they're going to see this kind of fearmongering metastasize into something truly harmful to their business.

Just wait until a 'facebook allows sexual predators to stalk your children' story pops up and goes viral. I give it a week, two at the outside.

[ErrantX]

> It doesn't matter that he's wrong.

No, no! It really does. Because we can't support the idea that it is going to be reported wrong - how is that going to help?

> facebook allows sexual predators to stalk your children' story pops up and goes viral.

That doesn't need this privacy thing to make a story. Facebook is already one of the prime ways that predators contact and stalk children (after all it is only one friend acceptance that is required to skip past plenty of privacy controls).

Also, it's a silly story because childrens profiles are pretty solidly restricted (under all sorts of rules and guidelines).

More importantly; there has been a story here in the media for the last few months regarding a "predator alert" button. Organisations in the UK are trying to get chat providers to place it prominently on Childrens profiles. Facebook have declined and the story has been all about that refusal and how bad FB is.

But the public don't seem to care all that much.... I'm not convinced this privacy story will interest them much more...

[mhansen]

Facebook is already one of the prime ways that predators contact and stalk children

citation needed?

[ErrantX]

I work in computer forensics (so from experience). :)

[ntoshev]

What (if anything) would you ask Facebook to do to help with this problem?

It seems to me that a paedophile using Facebook to contact kids will be very visible with certain statistical analysis of user behavior.

[ErrantX]

Not much more than they are already. There isn't an awful lot you can do to prevent this happening because there are too many variables.

> It seems to me that a paedophile using Facebook to contact kids will be very visible with certain statistical analysis of user behavior

I'm cautious of such methods - they aren't infallible, and what do you do with the results? Read their messages to be sure? Contact the police? Put a warning on their profile that others can see? All of that feels worrisome.

Really your kid being talked to by a pedophile is reasonably low probability. The chance of them being coerced into sending a photo or meeting them is also fairly low (for the most part those who use chat in this way aren't particularly predatory - they are more ill, or lonely and mislead. Not that this excuses them ofc).

Ultimately education of parent and kids seems the best solution.

[gaius]

It's more than that. CEOP (which isn't even the government, it's just an advocacy group that sells "diversity training" and so on) wants their panic button on EVERY page on FB.

But the case they use to justify this was a kid groomed by a paedophile on MSN, which does have the CEOP panic button, but no-one bothered to press it.

Basically CEOP are publicity whores who have just latched onto "won't someone think of the children!" as their vehicle to fame. And it seems to be working for them.

[ErrantX]

Yeh, in case it didn't come across - I am entirely in agreement with Facebook on this.

Especially as CEOP claim it is a "brilliant solution" when we tried to open a debate with them at a panel meeting....

I can see how it might be useful in a few circumstances (if done tastefully...) but a "big red button" is just silly, scaremongering and ultimately useless.

[adharmad]

Agree with your sentiment. But what we really need is a substitute for facebook. Until that comes, folks who want to socialize will continue to use facebook.

[mrvir]

There are already several alternatives to facebook. For example Google's orkut.com Seems to be popular in India. All the developers I work with there use it rather than fb.

[gaius]

Does anyone else see the irony in proposing any Google service as a remedy to privacy issues? Remember Buzz.

[mrvir]

Hmm, at least they fixed it and apologized.

Orkut privacy settings fit in one tab. There are seven settings of which five have just two options. All in simple English. I don't need to read a blog article to understand them. What is your excuse, facebook?

[rick_2047]

The college students are steadily shifting towards facebook. Orkut was popular, but now the latest social networking media is Facebook.