Facebook settles New York child safety probe:
Not too long ago, I posted about New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo setting his sights on Facebook because of pervs approaching his office’s fake underage Facebook profile.
Well, Facebook has caved in to him…
The settlement involves no financial penalties.
Under the terms of the settlement, Facebook has agreed to begin addressing any complaint within 24 hours of being told of inappropriate content — involving such things as nudity, profanity or harassment — by a user or e-mail correspondent.
The company will tell the complaining party the steps it has taken within 72 hours when the complaint has been submitted via an independent e-mail.
In addition, the Palo Alto, California-based company has agreed to allow an independent examiner to oversee how Facebook handles such complaints. The attorney general will have a say in who gets hired as examiner. The examiner will report to the New York attorney general every six months over a two-year period on Facebook’s compliance.
If I were Facebook, I would have told them to shove it. The amount of crime that happens on Facebook compared to MySpace is almost negligible.
Oh, and look, our friend AG Roy Cooper from North Carolina has to stick his two cents in…
“This agreement is another step toward protecting children on social networking sites but we still have a long way to go,” North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said in a separate statement. “Our group of attorneys general will keep pushing MySpace, Facebook and other sites to do more.”
Yet, Cuomo and Cooper aren’t pushing parents to do more because, as I’ve said, parents vote and the AG’s don’t want to risk not being re-elected.
