As an Internet lawyer, I’m dismayed to see there’s a push for Facebook to have a panic button installed for users because of the potential for attacks by cyberstalkers and sex offenders. No doubt some government agency in the U.S., U.K. or Canada will mandate it to “protect the children.”
In reality, minors shouldn’t be using Facebook unsupervised. And any adults who are on Facebook should have the common sense not to meet strangers in person after becoming “friends” online.
Of course, that’s too much to ask.
No one deserves to be raped or murdered because of their social activities.
Yet is Facebook supposed to save people from their own stupidity?
As noted on elsewhere on this Internet lawyer blog, I deleted my Facebook account because of Facebook’s disregard for privacy rights. Yet in this case, Facebook isn’t at fault when be people hook up with strangers using the site.
Related posts:
Mike, I agree that people need to take responsibility for their actions, and adults need to supervise their children’s online activities.
We already have plenty of rules and regulations in society. We need to be sure that any new ones serve a truly worthy purpose.
@ John
Any time the government regulates it has inadvertent negative consequences on other groups in society. Perhaps the funniest example is the latest healthcare bill stripped Congress of its own health insurance program for replacement by exchanges that won’t be set up until 2014. Don’t expect Congress to actually follow the law until then and pay for their own insurance but it shows they can’t even protect their own interests when drafting laws.
This is a very interesting subject.
The number of people being murdered and raped every day in our society ( outside facebook ) is huge.
Facebook is a social networking website with over 400 million users. It’s sad that murder and raping do happen because people meet on Facebook, but comparing the numbers of those incidents with the incidents outside Facebook, I am sure that we will quickly realize that CEOP should take care of the outside world to make it safer, rather than Facebook.
@IPaul. Agree. Facebook is a tool. It can be used for good or bad purposes. Just because there are bad things it can be used for, such as cyberstalking, doesn’t mean it should be banned or heavily regulated.
@Mike Young. Thank you Mike,
The numbers talk:
April 2008 and March 2009 13 crime reports on facebook and in the following 11-month period which means till February this year , this number leapt to 58.
If we add these numbers you got 71 cases in 22 months. So we have 71 cases in total of crimes (not sure how many were murdered) out of 400 millions users.
If we add USA and UK together they have approximately 370mill people.
Here is the murder cases only.
In the UK (population c. 60.5m) there were 765 reported incidents of murder for 2005-2006.
In the US (population c. 298.5m) there were an estimated 16,137 homicides in 2004.
Compare these numbers with Facebook. No comment.
My opinion is that CEOP should implement the “Panic button” on our streets not on Facebook. I am sure it will keep them busy 24hrs a day.