Facebook Buries Head In Sand On Sex Offenders (Updated!)
The PR Goofy Award for today goes to Facebook no less. A recent news flash from Yahoo! News announced that MySpace removed 90,000 sex offenders from their site. If the realization that so many potential offenders were there iwere not enough, Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt underwhelmed us with a response that was a “non-response”. I quote from the Yahoo! story; “We have a policy prohibiting registered sex offenders from joining Facebook.”
I am sure Facebook’s policy just scares the wits out of any would be child molester out there. I expect MySpace did not advocate or advertise for sex offenders either, but 90,000 anything represents a kind of “undesirable army” to me. Schnitt went on to say that Facebook is glad they have not had occasion to handle a case of registered sex offenders meeting children via Facebook.
Security from Spam
Good PR Is About Proper Communication
Just examining the wording of these statements reveals a little something about Facebook’s opinion I think. Rather than saying how glad Facebook is not to have had to handle a case, it may have been more appropriate to suggest that there “have been no instances reported”. I hope the reader gets my point here. Words are so indicative, and even if they are not the true intent of the spokesperson, part of being a good PR or spokesperson should be about words and what they convey.
Evidently Facebook has taken the “super secret ostrich strategy” to ensuring the safety of kids on Faceboook, as there has been no news of their findings yet. MySpace announced their numbers on Tuesday to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Cooper and Blumenthal have called for more child safe social networking Web sites.
Where Does It Say; “No Sex Offenders Allowed?”
Schnitt, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook, has been in the news several times with regard to Facebook’s TOS and other “use” issues. It is interesting to note that Facebook security, as far as I can tell, is all centered around Spam and virus issues. Nowhere in the revised TOS can I find any specific rule against registering sexual offenders. Here is a copy/past of the section of the TOS prohibiting questionable activity.
- do anything that could disable, overburden or impair the proper working of the Facebook Service
- use any robot, spider, scraper or other automated means to access the Facebook Service;
- send spam or any other unauthorized advertisements or solicitations through or using the Facebook Service
- harvest, collect or use addresses, phone numbers or email addresses or other contact information (collectively “Contact Information”) of users of the Facebook Service without consent from such users
- solicit private information (including social security numbers, credit card numbers and passwords) from users of the Facebook Service
- provide any false personal information in your profile, create more than one profile, transfer your profile, create a profile for anyone other than yourself or create a page without authorization
- use your profile (as opposed to a Page) for any commercial purpose
- offer any contest, sweepstakes, coupon or other promotion through the Facebook Service without our prior written consent
- use an iFrame or offer web search functionality on the Facebook Service
- intimidate or harass any user
- do anything that is illegal, infringing, fraudulent, malicious or could expose Facebook or the Facebook Service users to harm or liability
- attempt, encourage or facilitate any of the above.
As you can see, any red blooded sexual predator had better watch his/her step when engaging Facebook for harassment purposes. Facebook has responded to complaints that breast feeding images are inappropriate, but some tens of thousands of protests were lodged on this exclusion. Somehow I view child predators and actual sex offenders in a more negative light than some lady proud of her baby and their tender moments though.
Conclusion
I cannot, or will not, tell you how many small battles we have waged to try and make the Web a little safer for kids. From Wikipedia to the most remote site you can imagine, we have engaged conversation with CEO’s, users, media and just about anyone who “should” be interested in this subject. The bottom line is, hardly any of them are really interested except when it causes them a little bad PR. Just trying to get 5 company bosses to agree on anything, let alone a politically charged problem, is like making bricks without straw. The bottom line is, unless people (and lost os them) complain, Facebook or any other platform will not be what everyone considers a “safe” platform for their kids. Facebook is acting pitifully, as law enforcement attempts to help, they simply side step apparently.
Labeling whole groups of people, even convicted sex offenders, has its pitfalls, we are not lind advocates of anything that removes people’s liberties.We do however acknowledge our part in the responsibility to solve these problems. Just saying we want things to be right does not make it so. The problem with Schnitt’s statements, besides that they appear misleading, is that they indicate Facebook’s evident disregard for this problem. In this way, perhaps Schnitt is being a good “mouth piece” in that he is correctly conveying Facebook’s philosophy with regard to child predators. <in any case, we need a Facebook app for our PR Goofy Award, anyone want to create it.
Some suggested further reading :
http://www.wiredsafety.org/resources/pdf/predator.pdf
http://wiredsafety.org/
http://www.supportpapa.com/
Update: The following addition came about after discovery that Facebook actually has updated their TOS to include an eligibility caution for registered sex offenders. The author (me) actually either missed this or viewed a cached version prior to their current one. Regardless of the “how”, I would like to apologize for this oversight and I include the original text via Facebook below, with some questions interlaced.
Protecting our users, especially the many children who use our site has always been a top priority for Facebook. Then why was there no “eligibility” clause for registered sex offenders before February 4th, 2009? We have devoted significant resources to developing innovative and complex systems to proactively monitor the site and its users, including those not on a sex offender registry, for suspicious activity (such as contacting minors or users of predominantly one gender). Then why did you not simply report this news more aggressively?
We also have established a large team of professional investigators to evaluate any reports of potential abuse, including those surfaced by our systems or from our users. Given your reactive posture in this regard, does this mean there are registered sex offenders trying to use the platform? We have been working proactively with states’ attorneys general to run their lists of registered sex offenders against our user base. Our team uses various internal tools to automatically find matches. Any potential matches are evaluated more fully by our internal team of investigation professionals. If we find that someone on a sex offender registry is a likely match to a user on Facebook, we notify law enforcement and disable the account. Again, some transparency would have had a multiplicity of good effects. In some cases, law enforcement has asked us to leave the accounts active so that they may investigate the user further. So, even though you have not had to deal with cases, there are cases in some state of investigation?
We have worked proactively to establish a publicly available national database available to everyone of registered sex offenders that enables real-time checks and includes important unique information like email addresses and IM handles. Where is this data base, and how do we look at it? How can we verify what you say is true? Why did you not tell the world about this? How long have you been being so proactive? The passage of the KIDS Act, a measure we actively supported, was a major step forward and we’ve already contacted the new administration to offer our help in designing the real-time access features that it supports. Can we have a copy of this contact document? Again, why didn’t someone report on all this?
We are glad to be able to report that the success of these techniques means that we have not yet had to handle a case of a registered sex offender meeting a minor through Facebook. We are working hard to make sure it never happens. Lastly, the wording of this indicates you are glad you did not have to “deal” with it more than your joy over it having never happened. You are having to deal with all this, you appear to only be “happy nothing terrible has happened” is what it looks like.
Author’s addendum:The multitude of problems facing these massive social networks leaves administrators like Mr. Schnitt swamped with often unexpected issues and details to follow up on. I offer this tidbit of “slack” out of pure fairness, but the buck ultimately has to stop at his and his boss’ desk. It is my opinion that Facebook did not want even the “insinuation” of possible abuses, and that they took tehe “high ground” on this one. At least this is apparent to me.
Almost all of these quasi-new age developers seem to take this stance no matter what the issue is. I would call them flaming liberals if I still believed in such a polarity of politics. Freedom this and freedom that, when simple transparency (something they all claim to uphold) would suffice to cure a world of evils.
A suggested PR course might have been to reveal certain aspects of this to the news and on their site. Any registered sex offender, or other harmful element for that matter, would be deterred more by this transparency that the slight insinuation of it. This is not to say that Facebook or any other company should reveal anything that would further hinder efforts to protect the innocent. The problem here is one of 2caring after the fact” in my opinion. I applaud MySpace on this one for at least having the gumption to reveal the blackness of this issue.
Facebook, for all intents and purposes, is still asking you to believe that 90,000 potential sex offenders invaded MySpace, while Facebook unleashed a horde of private investigators and other measures, ensuring your child’s safety, and without whimpering a word about it. This is all I have to say now, save I have contacted North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal for comment. Perhaps you should too?
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I just talked with Mr. Blumenthal’s press secretary, who was unable to comment as to whether Facebook has been as forthcoming as MySpace with regard to their subpoena. Attorney General Blumenthal was not available for comment, but was obviously highly interested in these developments. I was directed to the end of their office’s recent press release in immediate answer to this question, and I quote the pertinent section:
“MySpace will turn over the information to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation starting today.
Recent reports also indicate substantial numbers of convicted offenders with profiles on Facebook. Blumenthal said that his office is awaiting a response to his recent subpoena to Facebook.”
I await a call from Attorney General of North Carolina Cooper, but given the dogged track of Facebook, I think the message is clear.
About the Author
Phil Butler is editor-in-chief of Everything PR and senior partner at Pamil Visions PR. He’s a widely cited authority on beta startups, search engines and public relations issues, and he has covered tech news since 2004. Phil wrote in the past for ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Profy, SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, AltSearchEngines. Follow Phil on Twitter or send him an email at phil [at] pamil-visions [dot] com.
Hey Phil,
Its been a while.
Just wanted to know what Veer has achieved so far.
Box office India is saying its below ...
I take it I am not your hero then.
Always,
Phil 
I read this article and i must say you ____. 
I agree wholeheartedly - but what can we do? I only wrote the story to announce the puzzling news - ...
Thanks for helping spread the word about HAPPO Kristen! As you point out "The Internet has made it even easier ...
What is with our society? Sex in a public bathroom is now a desirable and even promoted commodity? ...
Comment by Barry Schnitt on 8 February 2009:
Thanks for your attention to this issue. Unfortunately, your story is terribly misinformed. Three quick points:
1. At the very top of the site’s terms under the bold headline “Eligibility” it states: “If you are required to register as a sex offender in any jurisdiction, you may not use the Facebook Service.”
2. The reporter asked me if we had a policy against RSOs on the site and I indicated that we do. Yes, it is much more important to have infrastructure and procedures to get them off the site and keep them off. We have more to share on that as you see from our full statement below. However, policies are important for many reasons that I’m sure your readers understand, even though they appear to escape your grasp.
3. Our full statement, which was shared with the reporter who wrote the story you reference, is below. As I’m sure you know, we are not in control of what information a reporter actually uses in their story.
Protecting our users, especially the many children who use our site has always been a top priority for Facebook. We have devoted significant resources to developing innovative and complex systems to proactively monitor the site and its users, including those not on a sex offender registry, for suspicious activity (such as contacting minors or users of predominantly one gender). We also have established a large team of professional investigators to evaluate any reports of potential abuse, including those surfaced by our systems or from our users. We have been working proactively with states’ attorneys general to run their lists of registered sex offenders against our user base. Our team uses various internal tools to automatically find matches. Any potential matches are evaluated more fully by our internal team of investigation professionals. If we find that someone on a sex offender registry is a likely match to a user on Facebook, we notify law enforcement and disable the account. In some cases, law enforcement has asked us to leave the accounts active so that they may investigate the user further. We have worked proactively to establish a publicly available national database available to everyone of registered sex offenders that enables real-time checks and includes important unique information like email addresses and IM handles. The passage of the KIDS Act, a measure we actively supported, was a major step forward and we’ve already contacted the new administration to offer our help in designing the real-time access features that it supports.
We are glad to be able to report that the success of these techniques means that we have not yet had to handle a case of a registered sex offender meeting a minor through Facebook. We are working hard to make sure it never happens.
Comment by MSLGWCEO on 8 February 2009:
“Net threat to minors less than feared”
- A long awaited report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force concludes that children and teens are less vulnerable to sexual predation than many have feared.
The report also questions the efficacy and necessity of some commonly prescribed remedies designed to protect young people.
FULL REPORT pdf:
The task force was formed as a result of a joint agreement between MySpace and 49 state attorneys general.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/ISTTF_Final_Report.pdf
Comment by Phil Butler on 9 February 2009:
Barry,
Thanks for stopping in to address this issue. I am about to post an additional note in the article to show that I did in fact totally miss the Eligibility requirement you suggest. I am sorry for that oversight obviously. However, it does not detract from the overall intent of the article, which probably should have been more of a “Facebook Is Not Safe” one like the very in depth one Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch did 10 hours later. My contention with your statements (even taken out of context) was from a suggestive point of view, just a bad choice of words that convey the wrong message.
I guess I am forced to a degree to micro analyze the full statement now. As far as the not so vague inuendo into my ability to grasp the concept of contextual meaning, well…..I leave off on that part, as I can’t blame you for reacting to the obvious landslide of junk flowing your way at this moment. I can however, suggest you comment on the TC and subsequent Washington Post variants at least as vehemently….
The rest of my comment and update will be on the post itself. I will then submit this to digg and every other social network there is so that people can deduce what they may. It appears to me, and this is just my opinion of course, that Facebook has done the Silicon Valley version of the Potomac Shuffle on this whole affair. Reacting, rather than being pro-active in every regard. You guys have been swell at responding to user feedback, perhaps this has caused your governance to develop a corporate dogma that waits, watches and then does something if the heat gets too hot?
All in all, a great way to be a corporate example in the Web (or any other) community. Now you have addressed a simple PR Goofy Award for bad wording with a sledge hammer of defensiveness powered by one instance of poor reading on my part. More bad PR?
Always,
Phil Butler
Comment by Phil Butler on 9 February 2009:
Hi MS, Sorry I did not answer sooner. Yes, the actual gravity and numbers to these things can be nebulous and difficult to validate. I went through no less than 20 reports in just writing this commentary about bad wording. Obviously, it has gone farther than Facebook simply coming by to say they did goof on the wording, address some of the issues and leave it at that.
It has been our experience with Web 2.0 developers and corner men, that their first response is defensive and usually arrogant as hell to be honest. Perhaps this is where their problems start, who knows. Admitting and wrong in the good ole’ USA (or anywhere else for that matter) is obviously taboo these days. This whole thing could be handled easily through transparency and the truth. Not to say anyone is particularly lying, but there is little transparent underpinning as far as Facebook is concerned in my book.
Since they chose to take this track, it compels me to do more work in an effort to quantify all this. As I mentioned, I called the relevant officials and to be honest there were extremely nice and helpful. I hope Facebook and others will do their homework and realize the true gravity of this situation. It is not something that cool, stoic self importance can cover properly. Everyone makes mistakes, me more than my fair share, but then I am not the conduit for tens of millions of people. If I had the resources available to these people, and the inherent responsibility, then I would expect my mistakes to me amplified as well.
Always,
Phil
Comment by Kristen Nicole on 9 February 2009:
ToS are tricky for everyone to keep track of. Hopefully it wasn’t an oversight on your part regarding the ToS for Facebook re: sex offenders. I’ve heard all too often that Facebook’s terms for developers or users wasn’t updated in full. And for Facebook, getting the proper information out to users effectively is a challenge. I find that discussion boards on Facebook are some of the best resources!
Comment by Phil Butler on 9 February 2009:
Hi Kristen, to be honest I cannot swear that the terms were different when I visited, but I did read it pretty well? They updated on the 4th I think, but I was working from several posts and other resources that linked in various ways, who knows. It does not matter in the end, as just saying it is so does not make it so. I would have loved to have seen Facebook announce all their efforts way before a subpoena was even necessary.
Always,
Phil
Comment by bob on 9 February 2009:
It’s buries, not burries.
Comment by ma on 9 February 2009:
Ideally it would be awesome remove pedophiles from society as a whole however, it will not happen in our lifetime. While I don’t excuse pedophiles or their violations, pedophilia was a common practice throughout the 17th and 18th hundreds. Moreover, pedophiles are the end result of what they’ve endured from childhood. There is no successful psychological treatment for any of them. Pedophilia has no treatment or cure. And I said all that to say this. If Facebook was to take any type of action against known child molesters, it becomes an extension and representative of Cannon law. Do we really want that? I sure don’t. Besides, if Facebook is accountable for this type of lawful action then it is only right that any forum also be bound by the same rules or laws, if you will.
I have first hand knowledge and experience with online behaviors that are less than unsavory yet, I know that I can outwit many of them. It’s inconvenient plus a head trip that children incapable due to their mental and emotional immaturity to fully understand that pedophiles aren’t to be trusted in any sense. This is where parental bonds and guidance is blatantly warranted. Online behaviors and social interactions must be taught at home and by parents who hopefully are close enough to their children and comfortable enough with themselves to give their children enough of their personal time and knowledge to have “the talk.”
I don’t want a total stranger having “the talk” with any of my children. As a responsible adult, having the talk with my children is on me as it is with other parents as well.
Comment by Matthew on 10 February 2009:
Hi Phil,
I read this and something kept nagging at the back of my mind, that Danah Boyd has been talking about for a while, the fact that kids are actually a lot safer online than the media would like us to believe. Today, she’s posted about it:
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/02/06/doing_the_math.html
Thought you’s like to know.
Cheers,
Matthew
Comment by Phil Butler on 11 February 2009:
Okay, My keyboard got stuck and I mis-typed buries. Ugh
Hi Bob, Ma and Matt! As suggested by our polarity of responses, this issue is almost like talking about religion or politics. I tend to agree with Ma in that pedophiles should be ..errr…well, eradicated. One big problem with convicted sex offenders is that many are just young people caught having sex too early. Many however, does not suggest that “most” of these people are harmless. Matt, as for this study, I appreciate you taking the time to find it, but I can find 100 on either side of this issue.
I think we have to find some middle ground in our thinking, but Facebook basically ignoring or dragging a subpoena out is not my idea of good citizenship. Mr real opinion is that they could care less about this issue if it were not beating them in the face. In the end, most businesses care less about anything but making money and achieving their goals. In the end, at the end of the rainbow, those that protect, add value and value their users (all of them except criminals) will be successful. Amazon does not have a sex offender problem. LOL
Thanks Guys,
Phil
Comment by Sueblimely on 12 February 2009:
If Facebook did in fact have the policy of not allowing those on sex offender registers to join, prior to their recent clarification, then surely it has been marginally safer than MySpace who allowed 90,000 as members!
I say marginally, as those determined to offend will find ways of hiding their identities. It is those we do not know about that pose the danger and it is up to all adults to be vigilant and report those they suspect of offending and up to parents to monitor the online activities of their children. Application providers must take immediate acton on any reports.
If Facebook have monitoring tools in place, which attempt to alert them of suspicious activity, this reassures me far more than any policy they may write. Sex offenders will not be put off by policy and you don’t want parents being lulled into a false sense of security by policy which claims safety.
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