Social network giants agree to curb cyberbullying
By John Lister
Facebook and MySpace are among 17 social networking Web sites which have signed up to a European deal to combat cyberbullying. The sites will change settings to make full privacy the default for users aged under 18.
The deal is the work of EU Commissioner Viviane Reding whose remit includes information in society. She said social networking could only flourish “as long as children and teenagers have the trust and the right tools to remain safe when making new friends and sharing personal details online.”
As part of the agreement, the sites involved will set the full profiles and contact lists of under-18s to private by default. They will also make sure the full versions of these profiles will be hidden from searches either on the sites themselves or through external search engines.
The firms have also agreed to give more prominence to privacy options and provide a simple ‘report abuse’ button on every page so that users don’t have to search through help pages to highlight inappropriate content or contact.
That isn’t enough for child safety charity Kidscape which told PC Pro that sites didn’t do enough to follow up existing complaints, even those involving clearly abusive messages containing sexual content or other forms of bullying.
The agreement’s announcement coincides with the sixth annual Safer Internet Day, run by the European Commission funded group Insafe. The day is also being marked by the publication of a frankly bizarre video clip encouraging children to report online abuse. While no doubt worthy, it certainly appears to show the restrictions facing anyone trying to communicate with an audience speaking many different languages.
The European deal follows a recent US report which found that cyberbullying, often from so-called friends, was a far more prevalent problem than online grooming or sexual content. That may prove a limitation to the European deal given that it’s not so easy to objectively define the language and content which makes up bullying.
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