Social Media: staying the right side of the law and the extended UK Cap code

What you need to know about the changes in the UK's CAP codes, which now apply to unpaid social media spaces including user-generated content.

As Vikki Chowney from Reputation Online pointed out in her presentation at the IAB seminar 'How to be Safe and Social' last week, there are two sides to being 'Safe and Social'.  Protecting the user from content which may offend, distress, harm or infect.  And protecting the brand from user generated content which could impact their reputation or legal status.

The seminar turned out to have significant news about the latter, and set the Twittersphere chirping for a while.  So, for the benefit of those not able to attend - and with a great big fat disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer, so this *is not* legal advice as such, here's what went on.

Vikki Chowney's warmer-upper took us through a rogue's gallery of recent social media legal cases and pointed out a few landmark legal rulings.

Astroturfing.  Astroturfing, for example, was made illegal in the UK in 2008 as an 'unfair commercial practice' (The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008).  Someone should tell the tobacco industry.

Endorsement. In 2009 the US FTC published changes regarding testimonials and advertisements from celebrities and bloggers.  From there on, all such endorsements via conventional, online or social media must contain a clear disclosure. The practice of endorsing brands on micro-blogging service Twitter is common in the US, where celebrities including rapper Snoop Dogg, actress Lindsey Lohan and Kim Kardashian earn thousands of dollars for posting tweets featuring endorsements. However, now the US Federal Trade Commission insists such tweets include the wards 'ad' or 'spon' to indicate the endorsement has been paid for, even if only in exchange for product.

And in the UK, following an investigation into the commercial blogging network, Handpicked Media,  the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which enforces consumer protection law,  now insists that it must be clearly stated when promotional comments have been paid for, or were not actually written by the brand themselves.  As Heather Clayton, senior director of OFT's Consumer Group, said in regard to the Handpicked Media case:

"The integrity of information published online is crucial so that people can make informed decisions on how to spend their money. We expect online advertising and marketing campaigns to be transparent so consumers can clearly tell when blogs, posts and microblogs have been published in return for payment or payment in kind. We expect this to include promotions for products and services as well as editorial content."

As to where the disclosure should be displayed, the OFT says only that it should: "clearly identify, in a manner prominently displayed with the editorial content such that it would be unavoidable to the average consumer, that the promotion has been paid for or otherwise remunerated." For UK tweets, this may not necessarily be in the tweet itself, as is the case in the US.  Stating that these are paid-for tweets in the profile is probably sufficient, but I don't think this has yet been tested.

Libel. In the 2010 case of the cricketer Chris Cairns vs Lalit Modi, the liability for the spread of publication was under debate.  Modi was accused of defaming Cairns in a tweet which was subsequently deleted from his stream, and Modi's lawyers argued that the damage from the case would be so small as to be a waste of court time.  But having been received by Modi's followers, it was retweeted, and also screenshot and published in sports blogs, so the end readership would have been far in excess of Modi's small number of followers.   The judge in the case ruled that the case could go to court, and so allowed that a tweeter could be held responsible for the spread of their tweets beyond their immediately published realm.

Extension of the CAP code remit in the UK

Malcolm Phillips, Code Policy Manager at the Committee for Advertising Practice (CAP), announced the changes to the remit  of the CAP code of advertising (first covered here) and provoked the minor tweeting stampede. Malcolm, and the next speaker,  Senior Associate at Olswang Ashley Hurst, provided lots of examples and clarification of the potential impact of this change.

What is the change?

In response to a growing number of complaints (The Advertising Standards Authority received over 4,500 complaints since 2008 about online marketing), from March 1st 2011, the ASA’s online remit will:
"be extended to cover marketing communications on organisations’ own websites and in other non-paid-for space under their control. The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (the CAP Code) will apply in full to marketing messages online, including the rules relating to misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children."

From March 1st 2011, instead of only to paid advertising, the CAP standards will apply to "advertisers’ own marketing messages on their own websites, regardless of sector, type of businesses or size of organisation. Marketing communications in other non-paid-for space under the advertiser’s control, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter."

In other words (Ashley's) it will apply:

• To company websites and social media (including Facebook and Twitter)
• To UGC where adopted as part of marketing communications
• When the communication is intended to sell something

Here's Ashley's slide on the key features of the code: (you can download the full presentation from the IAB webpage here.)

Some useful take outs:

• Thanks to Share facilities such as 'tweet this' and 'share this', a website may now be considered as viral marketing.
• When tweeting prize promotions, be careful that the 140 character limit doesn't make you take shortcuts which could potentially mislead consumers, such as not mentioning key promotion terms and conditions.  For safety, it would seem advisable to always include a shortened link to a webpage which clearly states them.
• Although the CAP have been trying very hard to firm up the definitions, there are inevitably a lot of grey areas, highlighted in Ashley Hurst's presentation:

As @lakey tweeted: "I think the ASA has just discovered about 40,000 different new shades of grey".

The line between PR and marketing will be hard to draw.  We do know however, that the enlarged remit will NOT apply to press releases, other PR material, editorial content, corporate reports, investor relations material, historical advertising (provided it's not re-used for a new campaign).

The question of what previously published material falls under the new code is an interesting one.  All material published on or after 1st March 2011 is obviously included.  But so would be previously published material still utilised in a campaign or readily visible.  However, Malcolm said that the ASA would take a commonsense approach to this - there is no need for brands to sanitise the deepest darkest pages of UGC on their sites.

How this applies to user generated content is as follows: if the content is re-purposed for the brand's marketing efforts, it will fall under the code, and be subject to the 'legal, decent, honest and true' yardstick, and - very importantly - fall subject to the strict guidelines which apply to alcohol, tobacco and prize promotions.  It is UGC which seems to contain the most grey areas.

Photos on Facebook Fan Pages. For example, a Facebook Fan Page may contain photos posted by users and those posted by the brand, clearly separate, as seen here:

If the alcohol brand shown here had chosen to use the photo on the bottom right of the woman drinking and post it in their album at the top, that would probably fall foul of the CAP code which does not permit a brand to imply that alcohol can enhance attractiveness.


Comments or posts on Facebook Fan Pages. If a user posts an inaccurate claim for a product (let's say "Zappo snacks are gluten-free!"), and the brand thanks the poster for their comment (thus demonstrating that they have seen it and endorse the statement), then this would contravene the code.

UGC endorsements: If a brand uses a claim sent in by a consumer: "Dentifrice Whitener made my teeth sparkle in 30 days!  Jane Wallen, Hertfordshire"  on their website, before publication they'd better have proof that Jane Whallen exists, that she wasn't paid in any way to make this claim, that she wrote it herself and that her teeth were actually made whiter in 30 days. 

Retweets of UGC.  This caused the most alarm bells to ring.  If you are RTing, you are re-purposing UGC for marketing purposes.  If a brand re-tweets a consumer's tweet of: "WOW! You can get X cereal at half price in Dooley's Grocery Store today!"  and Dooley's grocery store ran out of stock yesterday - that is an offence under the code.

The reverse is not necessarily true.  For example, if any branded messages are re-tweeted with additional comments from the follower, the ASA will not hold the brand accountable for the additional user generated content.

Moderating out negative comments.  If all negative comments about a product are removed, leaving only the positive comments, this could also be seen as using UGC for the marketing purposes - so all the comments remaining should be screened against the code.

Up until now, the ASA has not received many complaints about social media.  And it is questionable how the policing of such stringent measures could be carried out.  The audiences raised fears that these new restrictions may be used by brands to wage war upon each other, rather than for consumer protection.  As to what sanctions are applicable, these also are extended, though the penalties do not seem huge.  From Malcolm Phillip's presentation (download it here):

So what do we do?  Well, from eModeration's point of view, we need to take the enlarged remit into consideration when advising UK brands on their moderation guidelines, and we need to train our community managers to be aware, for example when retweeting. 

The ASA themselves suggest the following ways to comply with the changes:

• designate someone to be responsible for ensuring your site complies with the rules
• sign up to CAP Services and take advantage of all the training and help on offer
• attend or watch webcasts of ASA’s and CAP’s training seminars on the new remit

The ASA has also created a Copy Advice website where you can see best practice examples and take advantage (at a cost) of their website audit service.

How will these changes affect your role, if you are a digital agency or a PR firm?  Comments below please (which we promise we will not re-use for marketing purposes), or add them to the twitter conversation with the hashtag #iakuk.

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The Giddy Social Whirl: News Round-up

A handy cut-out-and-keep guide to those bits and bobs you may have missed this week, while you were doing all that stuff you do.

A somewhat foreshortened skitter round the world of tech and social media this week: it is the school holidays, and I have been busily distracting my brood with bicarbonate-based explosives, eye-watering solvents, and colourful felt tips which turn out to be quite indelible.

Apple’s narrative of succession grinds towards its painful and increasingly Shakespearian denouement. As Steve Jobs sat frail at his sovereign’s right hand with his fellow Thanes of Tech ranked around him, a rebel faction of mutinous shareholders was clamouring to know the details of Apple’s succession strategem in the event that their wounded chief continues his recent decline. The Apple board managed to fend off their demands, but these are tricky times.

Trouble bubbled elsewhere in Apple's realm following the imposition of an onerous 30% tax on in-app subscriptions to movies, music and news. There have been mutinous rumblings against Apple from publishers including Spotify, Last.fm, Rhapsody and Amazon, and the US Dept of Justice is said to be watching with a hawk-like eye.

Further afield, the company is plagued by charges that it is careless with the wellbeing of workers in the Chinese factories which manufacture its products. A group of them this week urged Apple to ensure that employees who’d been exposed to the toxic chemical n-hexane would be properly looked after. It says the compensation offered by the factory’s owners is insufficient, and that sick workers have been pressurised into giving up their jobs.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government continues to clamp down on social networks it suspects are being used to foment dissent. Earlier in the year it blocked Twitter; now it is the turn of professional business network LinkedIn, which has been used by dissidents to co-ordinate protests against the regime.

Twitter itself came down hard this week on the developers of third-party apps Twidroyd and UberTwitter. Both were taken offline by Twitter, who cited policy violations including “trademark infringement” and “changing the content of users’ Tweets in order to make money”.

Their removal caused squeaks of anxiety amongst the professionally outraged, but in truth surprised no-one: both apps are owned by UberMedia, who have lately been pursuing an aggressive buy-up of Twitter satellites, most recently snapping up hefty client Tweetdeck. While good relations were eventually restored between developer and mothership, there can be no doubt that the latter has fired a laser-shot across the bows of any company it perceives to be muscling in on its monetization plans. As Techcrunch opined, this is business; it should come as no surprise that Twitter, the subject of ever more vertiginous valuations, would come down on That Type of Thing like a ton of bricked Windows 7 phones.

In Egypt, to celebrate the role that social media has played in fostering political change in his country, a father has gratefully named his newborn daughter 'Facebook'. He and his family are to be warmly congratulated on both the birth and their choice of name. It is, alas, more likely to stand the test of time than those of my own poor darlings Orkut, MySpace and dear little Ping.

Finally, we have harvested a bumper crop of interesting reads to satisfy your voracious appetite for knowledge and expert opinion:

How Brands Are Getting Lost on Facebook
Latest Facebook Changes a Mixed Bag for Nonprofit Page Admins
Why Facebook Could Dominate the Next Generation of Ecommerce
3 Facebook Commerce Success Stories
Why You Must Appreciate Facebook Mobile
Oh Uh… Google Just Launches the SEA Industry
5 assumptions about social search
Google Social Search and Twitter: Natural Bedfellows?
Google yanks request for kids’ social security numbers
Why Online Marketers Should Not Track Children
Why Disney Bought Togetherville
Social Discrimination, or How Brands Choose with Whom to Interact
Does Social Media Transparency Matter in the "Real" World?
5 Benefits of a Social Media Risk Management Program


A bientôt, mes amis!

For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams

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The Giddy Social Whirl: News Round-up

A handy cut-out-and-keep guide to those bits and bobs you may have missed this week, while you were doing all that stuff you do.


Some juicy Social Stats for 2010 were released this week: top marks to Facebook, which sucked in plenty of fresh blood and beefed up the amount of time users spent on-site, according to a new white paper on social networks from comScore. A full 10% of US page views in 2010 were taken by Facebook, 30% of all US internet sessions included a peek, and nearly 1 out of every 8 minutes online is spent on the site.

Bad news, on the other hand, for MySpace, which clings to the number two slot with bloody fingernails: user numbers declined by a painful 27% - and time spent on the site crashed by a (terminal?) 50%. LinkedIn is now in third place, with numbers up to 26.6 million visitors for December 2010. Twitter, the fourth most-visited social network, grew 18% to 23.6 million visitors, and that’s before you factor in mobile or third-party apps.

Meanwhile, good news for those of you who like your social networking high of brow and low of Kanye. If you’ve moved on from Quora, after one too many mystifying moderation decisions, or somehow never quite managed to get there in the first place, you’ll be thrizzled to know that TED, the ideas site, has launched a Quora-like platform for Intelligent Discussion. The plan is to exploit the social heft of the thought-leaders whose presentations are hosted on-site - in other words, you’ll be cooking with the big boys, so make sure you know your onions.

Facebook celebrated its relentlessly northward trajectory by rolling out its gussied-up messaging system to all users and launching a new Photos interface for the 60 billion photos hosted on-site (contrast this, for added amazement, with Flickr’s 5 billion). The new look features larger images and a lightbox-style platform, designed to offer Flickr a better run for its money, functionality-wise.

Now's the time, then, to get to grips with this photo business - particularly since recent research by Conversocial found that customers engage more effectively with photos than with any other content. This handy infographic has some eye-opening Facebook photo stats for your perusal.

Facebook also upgraded their relationship status offer this week, the better to accommodate the rainbow pairings which bejewel our society. Along with Married, Single, It’s Complicated and the rest of 'em, users can now choose from “In a domestic partnership” and “In a civil union.” About time, frankly - and personally I won’t be resting till “You know, a bit like in Jules et Jim” is up there as an option.

But by far the biggest Facebook story this week was the sound of quiet sobbing as the world struggled to get to grips with another sudden and major redesign of Facebook pages, including those for businesses, brands, media, and celebs. One can only imagine the global effing and jeffing along “it-aint-broke-don’t-bleedin'-fix-it” lines - particularly since the option to sort posts chronologically has been inexplicably withdrawn, to be replaced by a Facebook-determined algorithm of ‘relevance’. Fine if your page is, erm, 'uncluttered', but not so good if it’s super-busy – stand by for many posts being missed as a result of that capricious ‘upgrade’, which already has its own dedicated protest group.

But, without wishing to let daylight in on magic, being simultaneously imperious and capricious is pretty much what Facebook does. Like many, I anticipate only fully understanding Facebook’s labyrinthine user strategy in the moments before death, when the mists clear and the mysteries of life are revealed. At that moment, my friends, we will finally know how to turn off notifications from a page you are admin of, without affecting those from your personal profile. Until then, chin up chaps! We struggle on together.

To be honest, it’s not rocket salad. Key learning: your brand Page will look and function more like an individual profile, so that admins can now hurtle round Facebook 'dressed' as their Page, commenting on and ‘liking’ other people’s and brands’ pages to their heart's content. For more nitty-gritty, Inside Facebook has the skinny on the new layout, and Mashable has another brand-facing guide here. Between these and our own Tia Fisher’s drill-down into some possible challenges, you’ll be fine. Really. Oh no, I hate it when you cry.

Smartphones are breaking the mobile network, according to the International Telecommunication Union, and it’s only going to get worse, as numbers rise from today's 500m to almost two billion by 2015. Sales of data-hogging smartphones, which on average use five times the capacity that standard text-messaging phones use, rocketed by 74% last year, and governments were warned this week that they need to accelerate the rollout of high-speed fibre optic networks, and expand spectrum for mobile signals, if users are not to face increasing difficulty getting online.

Meanwhile – SQUEAL! – HTC confirmed they’re readying two phones with a dedicated Facebook button! Okay, so it’s not the official Facebook Phone, rumours of which regularly reach fever pitch before being mercilessly crushed - but it will do for those who really can’t bear to be away from their social network of choice for any longer than is strictly necessary. The button updates the user's Facebook status, uploads a photo, shares a website or posts music currently playing on the phone - and Facebook promises that deep integration will be coming to dozens of devices in the near future.

Talking of mobile social networking, as we most certainly were, research released this week found that many of us are happier to text, not tweet. A survey by Deloitte found that 90% of smartphone owners send at least one text message per day, while only four in ten access social networks - and you can bet those figures would be considerably higher if they included the text-frenzied cohort of teens and kids.

Even before President Mubarak stepped down last week, it was clear that Egyptian society had undergone a profound shift, and a chunk of the credit for that must go to the connectivity afforded by social media. Social networks - Twitter and Facebook in particular - are now hubs of protest across the region. So much so that Egypt's new military rulers have launched their own Facebook page, the better to communicate with “the sons and youth of Egypt who ignited the January 25 revolution”. Interesting times, indeed – this neat infographic charts the way we use social media in moments of crisis.

And finally, some thinky-bits for you to ponder this weekend, with a view to stretching your jets:

Google vs. Facebook For Control of Your Reputation

Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets - NYTimes.com

UR Doing It Wrong: how not to suck in social media

Hyper-Social Summit: Creating Successful Online Communities, Parts One and Two

Interview with Matthew Eltringham – BBC UGC Hub Past, Present and Future

A bientôt, mes amis!

For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for more general twittery, @KateVWilliams

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Changes to the Vetting and Barring Scheme in the Protection of Freedoms Bill

As many UK people will have heard, yesterday was the first day that the UK coalition government consulted its population via a 'public reading stage' prior to passing a Bill through Parliament. The first Bill to get this airing is the Protection of Freedoms Bill , which include within the proposed changes on the Safeguarding of Vulnerable Groups.

As an organisation which takes the protection of children and vulnerable adults very seriously, which subjects all its staff to enhanced CRB disclosures (that's ALL its staff - from moderators to administrators), we have been following the legislative changes keenly.

This blog isn't the platform for discourse on whether either this consultation or the proposed changes are a move to the good or not. But we'd like to try to add some clarity on what is a confusing area, by going through some of the proposed changes.

It's a long post, please bear with us, but nonetheless helpful we hope.

What was the proposed Vetting and Barring Scheme?

The previous government had proposed a Vetting and Barring Scheme. As succinctly as I can, these were the main points of the proposed scheme:

The VBS would have had two categories of work with children: "regulated activity" and "controlled activity".  ''Regulated'' activity means direct contact with children (a nurse, a scout leader for example), ''controlled'' means indirect or mostly supervised contact, such as access to children's data by doctor's receptionists, a cleaner in an old people's home or a volunteer parent literacy worker.

Anyone wishing to do this work - either paid or unpaid - must place themselves on a register with the ISA (Independent Safeguarding Authority).  An initial enhanced CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) disclosure would be carried out, paid for by the applicant if the position is paid, subsidised by the government if it was volunteer work.  From that point onwards, the person's record would be updated with any information which could prohibit them from such work, and any employer would be legally obliged to carry out a check with the ISA prior to filling such a post, either paid or unpaid.

If it was decided that anything known about this person (a convicted offence or other relevant information on an individual) should disqualify them from working with children in either regulated or controlled activity, they would be 'barred'.
It would be an offence to either work in, or employ somebody to work in, these activities if they were barred.
It would be an employer's legal obligation to inform the ISA of anything which might negatively affect the ISA status - e.g. if an employer has any reason to doubt that this person could be trusted to work with children.
When checking on the suitability of a candidate (a legal obligation), an employer would not be told why a candidate was unsuitable - i.e. would not be told details of criminal convictions, only whether they were barred on not.

Unlike the system currently in operation, there would be no need for costly, redundant and time-wasting new CRB disclosures for each new employer: the registration status would be kept updated and prospective employers would just have to ask the status of an applicant.
If someone on the register became barred (having previously been accepted onto the register), all employers who had applied for updates about this person would be told of the change of status (thus removing the current need for repeat checks).

Sounds pretty good.  What was the problem?

The lower level of controlled activity meant that registrations would be necessary for an estimated 9.3 million people.  There was a lot of press at the time about seemingly ridiculous examples of the type of activity which would require registration - offering a weekly lift home to a neighbour's child from football practice, a pharmacy assistant, an author visiting a school, etc.
This was felt to be a 'guilty until proven innocent' approach which would sully the motives of those wishing to work with vulnerable groups.

This level of monitoring of 'innocent' lives was felt to be intrusive and place an unnecessary burden of admin on both registrants and the State. It was feared that this would stop many people from volunteering and also would place an unfounded faith in the VBS system which would have the effect of blinkering employers and dissuading them from carrying out reasonable checks and precautions for themselves.  The present government states:

“Blanket” approaches such as the VBS have the potential to place the emphasis for safeguarding in the wrong place – on the State rather than on employers and individuals. That encourages risk aversion rather than responsible behaviour. It is the effective management of risk rather than aversion of risk which is most likely to protect vulnerable people. "

Obviously, it cannot be ignored that the vetting and barring scheme would also have been hugely expensive at a time of national austerity.

So what's changed in the new scheme?

• There will no longer be a category of 'controlled activities' and the 'regulated activities' will be redefined.   Only those who may have regular or close contact with vulnerable groups will be covered by the bars, but bars will continue to apply to both paid and unpaid roles.
  
•  There will no longer be two separate bodies, the ISA and the CRB.  They would be merged into a single non-departmental public  body (NDPB).
  
•  It will no longer be an offence to apply for work in a regulated area without ensuring that you have been checked.
  
• It is no longer an offence for an employer not to carry out a check - instead it is a 'duty to check' a new recruit before employing them.  If they *do* check and go ahead and employ a barred person in a regulated activity, then that remains an offence (see below).  In other words - it seems as though you stay on the right side of the law as an employer if you do not check in the first place.
  
• The services related to CRB disclosure and barring provision should become self-financing - i.e. CRB disclosure fees will rise.
  
• The only activities from which people may now be barred from working are "where they may have regular or close contact with children or vulnerable adults", and they may only be barred for "information of the most serious nature", "only serious criminality information".  The bar, literally, has been lowered in two directions.
  
•  For those not covered by the newly defined regulated activity but still working with vulnerable groups, an employer would have the ability to ask a person to apply for an enhanced criminal records disclosure.  However, the disclosure would *not* reveal whether that person had be barred from regulated activities.  The Government says in their report:

"We are aware that removing barring arrangements from some activities could give rise to an increase in safeguarding risks. Some people who may previously have been barred, or may now be barred from the reduced and redefined range of regulated activities, may be able to gain posts in other areas where they are able to work less closely with children or vulnerable adults. It will be up to employers to weigh up the risks involved. "

By this one assumes that they mean the employer would have to assess the enhanced CRB information for themselves, and - without the benefit of knowing the barring body's judgement, decide  whether the information in the disclosure is so serious that it should prevent that person from working with vulnerable groups in any capacity.  I think that's what the report means by "the Government’s drive towards restoring civil liberties and giving employers and voluntary organisations greater responsibility for making the decisions which govern how they work."

And what remains the same?

• Automatic barring should apply for those serious offences which provide a clear and direct indication of risk.
  
•  It remains a criminal offence to ‘knowingly’ employee someone who is barred from working with vulnerable groups in regulated activity.
  
• It will still be an offence to work in a regulated activity if barred.
  
•  Employers and managers of volunteers in regulated activity and certain regulatory bodies would still have a duty to report through to the new barring body where individuals have demonstrated a risk of harm to children or vulnerable adults.
  
• It will not be necessary to carry out separate enhanced CRB checks for each employer. A continuously updated and portable criminal records disclosure service means that people who move jobs frequently (supply teachers, locum doctors for example) will not need to apply for, or pay for, numerous repeat criminal records checks. For an annual subscription fee, new employers will be able to immediately access up-to-date criminal record information, on-line in real time.  It is up to the employer to continue to check the status of its employees or volunteers.

If you have any different interpretation of the new Bill, or an opinion of the changes, do leave them below.  The combination of this relaxation of rules and the UK Supreme Court's recent ruling that sex offenders may apply to challenge their lifelong inclusion on the Sex Offenders Register may start to ring alarm bells in some quarters.

As to whether moderation or community management would be considered regulated activities, the best interpretation I can get is this: in relation to the Children Act 2004, if the job function includes either access to a database containing information on children, or the provision of any form of information, advice or guidance (via any electronic means) wholly or mainly to children which relates to their physical, emotional or educational well-being, then yes, it would be considered regulated. 

eModeration will continue to ask for enhanced CRB disclosures for its entire staff regardless of any change in the law.

For those north of the border, the Scottish, as is frequently the case, are implementing their own system next week.  For more information on that, please see http://www.crb.homeoffice.gov.uk/faqs/scottish_pvg_scheme.aspx

Implementation timetable

This is the timetable for implementing the recommendations in this review:
Feb 2011:   Introduction of the Protection of Freedoms Bill
Nov 2011: Royal Assent for the Bill, subject to the will of Parliament
2012: Commencement of the relevant provisions in the Bill
2012: Creation of new barring regime
2012: Introduction of continuous criminal records updating
2013:  New disclosure and vetting service begins work

For further reading:
 Home Office  Vetting & Barring Scheme Remodelling Review – Report and Recommendations.
The Public Reading Stage of the Protection of Freedoms Bill.

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The Facebook Pages redesign - what's changed and what does it mean?

I'm still checking out the Page design changes which Facebook released last week and garnering opinions on them.  I started out thinking that they were very positive, but as I've dug deeper, some disadvantages are starting to emerge.  

So what's new?

When you log in, you're given a brief tour of the changes and an option to upgrade to them (which will be compulsory on March 10th - at least in the US).  There are several changes (check them out here, or on the blog posts below) but these are the headlines:


Being the brand  
As a page admin, I can now choose to log in as my brand, and interact on Facebook as that brand - instead of as my profile.
So now I can be 'eModeration', and in the same way that I do on our Twitter account, reach out to Pages I like and respect, and talk to them with my company hat on.  The Page now has its own Newsfeed from other 'liked' pages.

However, a word of warning here from Angela Connor: what I regard as a great opportunity to connect with brands I admire, is another's license to spam.  As she puts it:

"Do you know how tempting it is going to be for admins to post all over other fan pages and go directly to individual profile pages and start pushing their messaging?

VERY!

Think about it. You can now just trot on over to any profile page and start pushing all kinds of marketing messages. “Visit our page,” “Buy our stuff,” “Come download our coupon,” “We just posted a new brochure, you’ll love it.”

Get my drift? And that’s just scratching the surface.

It’s one thing to remove unwanted messages from your inbox, but constantly removing from your wall? The average Joe, non-marketing Facebook user isn’t ready for this at all. I think it will get ugly fast."

There is the option (edit page> featured>add featured page owners) to have selected admins' profiles shown on the Page itself, and this may or may not be a Good Thing (would need careful consideration in my view) - but it's nice to have the choice to be able to show who administers the Page and at times I can see the need to want to contact a Page admin in the case of inappropriate content appearing on a Wall.

Auto-moderation
And, *really* good news on the moderation front.  I know that I appear to be shooting myself in the business foot here, but of course good Facebook moderation and community management aren't just a question of deleting profanities, as our clients are fully aware.  Just look at the need for spam removal, which could be even more pressing if Angela Connor's prediction comes true.  Now Facebook offers three levels of auto-moderation (none, medium or strong) and a blacklist into which you can insert any words which you wouldn't wish to appear on your page.  See Facebook's help section and this Inside Facebook article for more details: I'd love feedback on how they perform.  The obvious 'Scunthorpe' issues are likely to arise due to over-assiduous application of blacklisted words, and I wouldn't recommend resting easy after switching it on: keep going back and checking yoru hidden comments and your front end published comments.  However, I can think of a lot of pages which would really benefit from this API sweep: it's a lot better than nothing.  Please see my post here for some testing I did on this feature.

To find the moderated comments, go to your Spam tab, and you can reinstate them from there if you wish.  Can't find your spam tab since the redesign? Here's where it's hiding:  Wall>admin view> hidden posts.

You can also choose whether or not you wish to be alerted when someone posts on your wall, which would obviously be useful for low traffic sites.  If you *don't* want this function (and I think most people won't), here's how to turn it off. Instead of going to Account Settings > Notifications > Pages (like you would think you'd do, right?), you need to do the following:  Go to the page you are an Admin on. Edit Page > Your Settings. Then unclick "Send notifications to youremail@emoderation.com when people post or comment on your page."

Ordering and filtering posts
The order in which posts appear on the Page will now be determined by a Facebook 'popularity' algorithm, instead of being sorted chronologically.  Admins have a choice over how they view posts, but users don't.  As the Facebook preview puts it:

Presumably, Facebook wants users to come to the most engaging content first.  But they haven't offered this an optional view: it's the only view for users. And some, at least, are not happy about this.  As Simply Tech puts it:  

"The main complaint, which is already mobilizing a large number of users is the mind boggling option to sort the posts by “relevance” instead of by chronological order. Under the new upgrade, you would have no control over the order in which your posts appear. If you post something today, but Facebook decided it isn’t relevant, it would move it to the bottom of the page, and posts (some of them months old) would be on top of the page instead. How they have designed the algorithm that determines the relevance of each post is a mystery to users, since there does not seem to be any logic to the madness.

"The obvious upset is that most people post according to what is relevant at the time, so they know what is relevant in a way that an algorithm could never determine. Some of the groups complaining have been help groups such as the Multiple Sclerosis page, which says that those posting on their boards need immediate help, and since their posts can be moved to the bottom of the page, their calls for help would have never been seen.

"Groups that run animal shelter pages, say they post the most urgent calls for help on their pages, but since “upgrading”, Facebook has decided some of those aren’t “relevant”, and have moved them to other pages instead, bringing posts that weren’t current anymore to the top of the page, putting animals’ lives in danger.

"Performing companies now will have to deal with the fact that their most current performances might never appear on the top of their pages, so news just won’t be news anymore."

Update 11/03/11: Facebook now allows admins a choice of views: http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-expands-filters-for-page-wall-posts-2011-03

Other changes and more reading


Inside Facebook -  Facebook Adds Keyword Moderation and Profanity Blocklists to Pages
Marketing Gum - What's Happened to facebook Pages? New Upgrade Explained
SF Gate - Seven days of testing the new Facebook Page upgrades
The Next Web - 5 ways the new Facebook Pages can benefit your business
The Community Strategist - With new Facebook fan pages, rules of engagement are more relevant than ever 
Simply Tech: Facebook Page Updates Under Attack By Users 
FAQs from Facebook on upgraded page design
Facebook's new pages: what they mean for marketers (eConsultancy) 
Social Media Examiner 8 New Facebook Changes - What You Need to Know

Please let us know what you think of the features, including the ones we've not covered here, like the photo display.  Do you think that the increased risk of spam will outweigh the opportunities for brand connections? On balance do you think the changes are mostly improvements?  Or should Facebook have consulted more widely before implementing? What will they mean for your Page?

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New guidelines on how to keep online environments safe for children

Today being Safer Internet Day, we’re really pleased to announce that comprehensive guidelines for how to moderate online environments for children have today been launched by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. (UKCCIS)

The guidelines were first produced  by a Home Office sub-committee in 2005, when Facebook was a fraction of its size, Club Penguin was just launching, Moshi Monsters was still two years away, and Twitter didn’t exist. New guidelines were needed to take into account the fast pace of change in technology and user behaviour over the last six years, and those released today are designed to create best practice principles that can be applied to new technology innovation as it occurs; and be updated as major changes take place.


These new guidelines have been drafted with input from industry, charities and child safety experts; and (as did the 2005 version) include specialist moderation advice from eModeration and other leading UK moderation agencies.  The guidelines - Good practice guidance for the moderation of interactive services for children – are designed to give good practice guidance to the providers of interactive environments used by children, such as social networks, MMOGs, forums and messages boards; chat and instant messaging  and blogs and microblogs such as Twitter.   Really, anyone who is involved in sites or online activities which might attract UGC from under 18's should download a copy of the (free) revised guidelines.

The document:

• Describes the different types of user interactive services
• Informs organisations of the potential risks to children using interactive services, including: bullying; sexual exploitation and grooming; self-harm and destructive behaviours
• Informs organisations of the issues they should take into account when considering what safeguards to deploy
• Describes the types of moderation that can be used
• Helps organisations to develop, review or update policies on the recruitment, selection, training and supervision of moderators to safeguard against unsuitable individuals gaining contact with children; and reporting of incidents and concerns. 

The guidelines can be downloaded from the UKCCIS site here.  
In the UK, Safer Internet Day is being organised by the new UK Safer Internet Centre.  Go to www.saferinternet.org.uk for details of activities taking place today across the country. 

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Giddy Social Whirl: News Round-up

SQUAWK! It’s Social Media Week 2011!

This week, every mover and shaker from the world of social media will be gathering together, online and off, for one helluva jamboree. Social Media Week is the global event for all those who work in, think about, or use social media - an unmissable opportunity to chew the fat with participants from every corner of our increasingly social world.

To start you all off on the right foot, here’s a quick round-up of some of the stuff you might have missed last week, while you were doing all that other stuff you do.

News Corp launched The Daily ...

... amidst much hoo-ha and general kerfuffle. The app is a 100-page interactive daily news mag that features plenty of whizz-bangery – 360-degree images, video and audio clips, and the ability to share articles on Facebook and Twitter. But the launch provoked mixed reactions: despite rumours that the app is engaging readers for up to 40 minutes a day, there were complaints that it took a lifetime to load, and sniggers at the ease with which its paywall can be circumvented.


NewsCorp and MySpace Drift Apart

Sob - as one door opens, another one closes: we learnt last week that it really IS all over between Mr Murdoch and former light-o-love MySpace, when COO Chase Carey said MySpace's financial performance had been "below expectations" and confirmed that the social-network-cum-music-and-entertainment-sharing-space "may be better developed under a new ownership structure".


Robert Scoble Calls It Off With Quora

An awkward moment for rising star Quora this week, when erstwhile evangelist Robert Scoble, who’d arguably driven much of the site’s rocketing popularity, decided he’d been very wrong indeed.

It was the lack of transparency in the site’s moderation process which particularly got Scoble’s goat – but he’s not the only one to wonder whether Quora – recently valued at an impressive $300m - can actually carry the weight of its own hype. Scoble's change of heart also raised intriguing questions about the built-in dysfunction in the relationship between start-ups, and the social media mavens who champion them.


Happy Birthday Facebook: Deals, Comments, and Ads-ago-go

The World’s Favourite Social Network® turned seven last week, amid speculation that the site has already breached the 600 million-user ceiling.

Earlier in the week the site had given social commerce a considerable leg-up, with the launch in the UK of Facebook Deals, offering discounts to mobile users who check into shops and restaurants, as well as letting them see what deals are available nearby and – the social-commerce ‘no-brainer’ – what their bargain-hunting friends are up to.

Meanwhile, signs are that Facebook will be launching a third-party commenting system within weeks, positioning itself as the platform driving comments across the length and breadth of the web - including overseeing log-ins, and the cross-promotion of comments on users' Facebook walls as well as on digital publishers' own fan pages.

Not all was rosy for Facebook, however - new research showed that Facebook ads are only performing half as well as bog-standard banner ads (check out this piece if you’re still getting to grips with the difference between Facebook ads and Sponsored Stories).

Egypt Unplugs the Net: Twitter and Google to the Rescue, Kenneth Cole to the Doghouse

Amid ongoing scenes of mass protest in many Egyptian cities - much of it disseminated via social media - the Egyptian government first blocked access to Twitter and Facebook, then to the entire internet. A joint effort by recent Google-acquisition Say Now and Twitter quickly produced a very neat workaround – a speak-to-tweet service, which auto-tweets the voice-messages left by Egyptians on an international voice-messaging service. Smart.

Less smart: the painfully ill-judged tweet from Kenneth Cole's Twitter account, which made light of the unrest by ascribing it to the Egyptian people’s excitement at the footwear brand's new collection. The somewhat accident-prone company was forced to pull the tweet, and later issued an apology on its Facebook page.

Google V Microsoft

Lots of Google-y goodness last week: First CEO Eric Schmidt stood aside to let Larry Page take the helm, a decade after he was brought in to provide ‘adult supervision’ of Google’s student co-founders Page and Sergei Brin. To mark his departure, giant-interweb-brain Schmidt outlined his vision of the future for both Google, and the rest of the internet – well worth a look.

Next the company stirred things up with the publicly-lobbed accusation that Bing, the search engine developed by arch-rivals Microsoft, was plagiarizing their search results. The charge was vehemently denied by Bing honcho Yusuf Mehdi, prompting gleeful headlines: Wow, Microsoft And Google Are Punching Each Other In The Face Right In Front Of Us!

And Finally...

If you’re going to keep up with the smarties who are powering Social Media Week, you urgently need to get your thinkings on. To get those juices flowing, the following nuggets are fresh, and well worth chewing over.

1-In-4 Apps Used Just Once

Facebook, Twitter Don't Make Customers Feel Valued

Social Media Means Certain Death of the Greed is Good Paradigm

Is The End of Social Media Already Written Into Its Success?

The Lies People Tell on Your Online Community (Reflections on “I Was Teenage Hockey Message Board Jailbait”)

Communities – Niche vs. Mainstream And Selective Membership

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