Internet Watch Foundation marks 15 years

Protecting children from abuse is about the most important thing that our moderation teams do, and we're very proud of them for their diligence and resilience. But the work they do, and the images they see, pale into insignificance with the work done by the (very few) staff of the Internet Watch Foundation, a charity supported wholly by donations from the EU and the internet industry.  If our moderators encounter an illegal child abuse image, then we report it to the Internet Watch Foundation, who investigate it and have the webpage removed.

Today (26 October) the IWF not only marks its annual Awareness Day, but reflects on its 15 years of tackling online child sexual abuse content.  Some facts (and some of them are very disturbing, apologies in advance):

A staggering 87,000 child sexual abuse webpages have been removed in 15 years thanks to the work of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Since it was launched on 1 December 1996, the IWF has assessed almost 370,000 webpages.

As a result of the IWF’s work with the online industry, the volume of UK-hosted child sexual abuse content has reduced from 18% in 1997 to less than 1% since 2003 and the IWF has kept it that way. Child sexual abuse webpages in the UK are rapidly removed thanks to the responsible actions of the online industry with whom the IWF works.

However there is still a problem with child sexual abuse content hosted around the world.

This photo is licensed under cc by sa 2.0 by tacit requiem

• The IWF statistics spanning the past 15 years show 45% of the worldwide webpages assessed and actioned for removal by the IWF featured children aged 10 years and under, including babies.

• For the past four complete years (2007 to 2010) this figure is 73.5%. This reflects the increasingly extreme nature of the content assessed and actioned by the IWF analysts. 

•  Since 1996, 40% of the global child sexual abuse content actioned by the IWF involves the rape and sexual torture of children.  

• For the past four complete years (2007 to 2010) this figure is 53.5%.

A little Q&A:


Where can you make a report?
 Here: https://www.iwf.org.uk/report

What be reported to the IWF?
They can receive reports about child sexual abuse content (images + videos) from anywhere in the world. They can only take reports of criminally obscene adult content and non-photographic child sexual abuse images if they are hosted in the UK.

Do they report content to the police?
It depends where it is hosted:
UK hosted sites – They liaise with CEOP who in turn contact the relevant local police force.  The police then carry out their own investigations and decide whether they are going to prosecute.
Non UK hosted sites  - If there is an INHOPE hotline we do not report to CEOP but input into INHOPE Database for the hotline in that country to pick up and take appropriate action in their own country.  The IWF then follow up to ensure the content is removed.  If there is no INHOPE hotline , then they report to CEOP and notify the hosting provider

Can I make an anonymous report?
Yes you can.  You can choose to leave your details in order to receive feedback on what has happened with the suspect content they reported, and whether it does in fact contravene UK law, but the IWF also enables the public make reports anonymously.

How do ISPs use the information from the IWF?
Once it has been determined that content is ilegal under UK law, while actions to remove the content are in progress, the IWF updates its URL list of child sexual abuse content which the online industry voluntarily deploys to protect their customers from stumbling across the content. This list is updated twice daily to ensure the URLs which contain child sexual abuse material remain on the list until the content is removed. Typically the list contains around 500 URLs each day.

The IWF is funded by the EU and member companies from the online industry, including internet service providers (ISPs), mobile operators, content providers, hosting providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations and the financial sector. They work together to ensure UK networks provide a hostile environment for hosting child sexual abuse images and to protect UK internet users from inadvertent exposure to such content.

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Proposed changes to the defamation law will affect online publishers

Last week a joint committee of peers and MPs published their report into the Government's draft Bill revising the UK's defamation laws.  The revisions are manifold and aimed in part at reducing the amount of 'libel tourism' and also supporting complainants who cannot afford to make a legal challenge to those with bigger pockets. But it's the proposals regarding social networking which seek to alter the liability of online publishers; the rights and wrongs of anonymous posting and the revision of the notice and take down procedure, which will have large repercussions and are exciting much comment.

As eModeration has frequently stated, the legal liabilities of a UK/EU online publisher (and by publisher I mean owner of a site containing UGC or an ISP)  are not clearly defined, and would seem, if strictly applied, to actually penalise those who attempted to safeguard reputations by pre- or post- moderating all content.  By doing so, they would seem to lose their entitlement to the 'Hosting Defence;' and be liable for all UGC published.  However, this has been historically a grey area, with the few legal cases not yet indicating a clear view one way or the other.  The result of this has been a natural inclination for publishers to err on the side of caution and remove material 'just to be on the safe side' - or to risk reputational damage by restricting moderation to reactive moderation only.

The recommendations of this report now seek to clarify the issue and to draw a distinction between anonymous and identified commenters.  Their proposed system would work like this:

1. For 'Identified' comments:
a) Complaint is made to publisher.
b) Comment may stay online (at the discretion of the publisher) - however, a notice of the complaint must be published alongside it. If the publisher does not do so, it can only rely on the standard defences available (i.e. the Hosting Defence or any other defences against defamation).
c) Complainant may apply to the courts for a 'take-down' order.


2.  For 'Anonymous' comments
a) Complaint is made to publisher.
b) Publisher must immediately contact the person who made the comment and ask them to identify themselves (in which case follow the procedures in 1 above).
c) If the commenter refuses to relinquish their anonymity, or cannot be traced, then the comment should be taken down from the site, and, if not, the complainant may apply to the courts for a 'take-down' order.
d) If the publisher believes that there are significant reasons of public interest that justify publishing the unidentified material—for example, if a whistle-blower is the source—it should have the right to apply to a judge for an exemption from the take-down procedure and secure a "leave-up" order.

"Anonymity may encourage free speech but it also discourages responsibility” Draft Defamation Bill Committee

Opinion as to whether these are smart moves is fairly firmly divided, as the comments below this BBC coverage show.  Any perceived threat to free speech provokes reaction - and not all of it as thoughtful as this, from Justine Roberts, Mumsnet founder.  She said while it was right to stop people from "assassinating the character of others from behind the cloak of anonymity" the report did not recognise how useful anonymous postings were "in allowing people to speak honestly about difficult real-life situations". 

"The recommendations could have a chilling effect on sites like Mumsnet where many thousands of people use anonymity to confidentially seek and give advice about sensitive real-life situations." Justine Roberts, Mumsnet founder

From the moderation point of views, I'm interested in finding the answers to these questions:

What is anonymity?  Anonymous to whom, the reader or the publisher?
Is it not publishing a name at all, or publishing an obvious pseudonym, or publishing a fake name?  If I register myself with the BBC website as 'Dave Smith' and give dave.smith1225467@gmail.com as a working email address is that enough, even though of course it is not my real name?  Would it be necessary to publish via a social network identity - which of course isn't foolproof either *and* could lead to serious privacy issues?

Currently publishers have an option to permit anonymous posting.  Should that no longer be an option? Tracing via an IP address is not always possible - and what about shared computers?   It seems to me that publishers would do well to immediately pull down any anonymous comment which receives a complaint, given the dificulty of tracing the person who posted it.

What exactly needs to be published alongside a comment about which a complaint has been made?  A counter, with the number of 'flags', or the substance of the complaint?   Either way, a substantial rejigging of comment publication and moderation tools will be necessary.

What effect would this have on levels of complaints?  There are fears it may increase them, and if it did, could publishers afford the necessary increased moderation workload in publishing complaints and contacting anonymous users?

All in all, whilst the aims of the draft bill are laudable, I'm not entirely sure this is a truly workable solution. What do you think about anonymity? Is it necessary to preserve free speech?  Are there any other aspects of the this reform which have got you worried?  If you've got more doubts - or have any answers - please comment below (where you do have the option of anonymity, but all comments are pre-moderated ;))

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The proposed changes to COPPA: can they work? We think not.

In September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is the US Government branch that oversees marketing to children online, released its proposed revisions to the Children's Online Privacy Protection (COPPA) Rule. 

In case you don't know it, COPPA addresses regulatory oversight of online marketing to US children under 13. Because of the global nature of the internet, COPPA's regulations effectively apply worldwide.  COPPA is the reason for (for example) Facebook's age cut-off at 13. Changed to COPPA affect all website registration, especially of course, those aimed at children, so please forgive this particularly wordy post, but its really important.  COPPA are gathering views now (see the link at the bottom) so if this will affect your business, go and make your views known.

Check out the link to the proposed changes for more details, but briefly, the revisions include changes to the definition of “personal information” (to include geolocation information & cookies) and parental consent mechanisms (to include electronic scans of signed forms, video-conferencing, ID cards but to eliminate the current "e-mail plus" method).

I wanted to know what the proposed changes might mean to children. their parents and website owners, so here I've gathered three views.

Firstly, I spoke to Rebecca Newton, Chief Community & Safety Officer (CCSO) at Mindycandy.com, the company who run the hugely successful Moshi Monsters.  Here's what she had to say ....

"The FTC has done a fine job of gathering input from relevant industry members, including hosting a COPPA Rule review roundtable in June of 2010. The discussions and requested public comments have played a strong part in the proposed revisions, which is refreshing - if not hopeful - for a government body. Overall, I think the largest victory for a faction of industry folks is that the FTC has not proposed to raise the rule's applicable age limit to teenagers (13 and over). [I hear faint sounds of "hurrah"s around the globe]. 

"It's been nearly 14 years since COPPA was enacted. The daily Under 13 web population is approaching 25 million. It's an understatement to say the revision is long overdue. But before we're too quick to pop the champagne on the over 13 victory, there are a few grey areas to investigate. In particular, the impact of removing the "e-mail plus" system.

"E-mail plus" was originally meant to be a temporary verifiable parental consent (VPC) system. To read the proposed elimination of 'e-mail plus', consider this well-written article by Adam Thierer (@AdamThierer)  and this piece by Cutter Law P.C.  In a nutshell, eliminating the "e-mail plus" system today would cost a kid's virtual world/social gaming site about 12 million dollars a year. I've done the math and asked a finance expert to check my numbers before I submitted that number at the FOSI.org/TechFreedom.com FTC COPPA Revision panel last week in Washington, D.C. This number assumes a registration count average of 70K users per day. I won't take up the space in this blog to show how I arrived at that number, however, I'm happy to share it in a follow up blog post. My point is, if it costs a major successful corporation 12 million a year, how much will it cost a start-up? With all considerations of how the social/gaming web really works on a daily basis, a site operator would be lucky to get 12.5% of the parents of those 70K registered users to follow through with the proposed highest level of VPC (drivers license number, last 4 digits of a social security number, fax-back (that makes me head hurt), phone verification (now we're edging toward a migraine) or - wait for it - Skype verification (thud! full blow migraine). None of the aforementioned types of VPC are scalable today. And until such time as we have a full-blow VPC provider with a national database of parents signed up to verify their under 13s ability to go play on a kid's site, the high volume site operators are stuck with the 12 million dollar cost per year. I did the math, again, on how many humans it would require to deal with 17,500 parents who want to follow through with one of the above VPC methods each day - need I say any more?

"I'm not convinced 17,500 parents a day want to share their license number, social security digits, face on Skype, voice on the phone, or download, print, fill out, scan and return a piece of paper stating their child can play with monsters online. But, assuming they are somehow convinced it's worth their time and privacy and effort, who can keep up with that many people per day? The tech implications for a site owner are scary. I didn't even begin to do that math. And don't get me started on the government issued national ID proposal. (too late!)

"I understand the FTC is hoping to see third party vendors create "pay-pal" type VPC systems, where parents can verify who they are and who their children are, and decide about opting in or out for this and that. And I understand there are some providers out there who can address this today or very soon. But in the meantime, I'm hoping we have a year or so of transition  because we have this awkward period of knowing that no one wants to be the first on the dance floor. It will take a while for parents to understand this requirement and to comply. It's arguable as to whether they will ever understand it, agree or comply. I hear from teachers all the time that they can't get parents to sign permission slips for field trips. How in the world can we expect parents to take the time to verify every kid's site registration ? Perhaps the government is counting on whining children to bring their parents into submission. That may very well work from what I see of current day parenting. On a serious note, I don't see the VPC system catching on quickly. This potentially leaves us with fewer content-rich sites for kids. OR, an entire nation of kids pretending to be 13 and 14 during registration, which is already quite prevalent in this industry.

"I hope to make a strong case for the continuation of 'e-mail plus' - as I said last week, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's make 'e-mail plus' better. There should be a sliding scale system. Something in-between eye-dentification and children clicking activation links pretending to be parents. The good news is, the COPPA revisions are proposed and not set in stone. And I believe Phyllis Marcus when she says the FTC will take all public comments into consideration and that the revisions are proposed and not final. I appreciate this about the FTC's COPPA group. They are few but mighty and take their work seriously. I only wish the majority of parents would take their responsibilities as seriously. We likely wouldn't have a need for COPPA (apologies, FTC!)".

I also spoke to child safety consultant Carole Fletcher from KidsOkOnline, about her thoughts on the registration process:

"We found the only effective way to authenticate children for SuperClubsPLUS was through their schools. Teachers applied for membership. We validated the teachers by phoning their schools. Then the teachers nominated their children. It works really well for small communities but it's expensive and not scalable for millions of kids joining networks from home. Well done COPPA for trying, but we know that very few parents will be bothered to go down the Skype/Fax route.  In the long term the only answer is a one-time age registration system that creates a database that sites can 'ping' to authenticate a child. Until then there could be a danger that parents will encourage their kids to lie about their age, as millions already do to get into Facebook and the gaming sites."

And finally, here is another child safety expert, Anne Collier, talking about the changes, published in her blog, Net Family News: 

"It’s one thing to keep laws in sync with tech development – that’s important. It’s another to increase regulation of tech services. I urge parents not to take calls for greater regulation of children’s tech providers reflexively as 100% good. Especially where social technology and media are concerned (technology that plays host to human communication, behavior, and creativity), regulation is a two-edged sword. While aiming to protect, it can also have a chilling effect on innovation and free speech – in this case, product development and options for children. There is no question innovation and free speech can allow for harm, but free societies protect them because they fuel individual and collective learning, creativity, and productivity for citizens of all ages. If the cost of COPPA compliance becomes too high for children’s startups and small businesses, children will have fewer options for fun and learning in digital media. This deserves careful consideration.

"In its coverage of the COPPA changes, the New York Times quotes a legal scholar as saying they won’t materially affect Internet companies because many avoid serving children under 13 anyway because of the cost of COPPA compliance even now. I’ve seen that too. So I hope wise regulators, advocates, and parents will thoughtfully seek the right balance of protection and innovation for businesses specifically serving children. Parents may also want to consider the impact on their own as well as their children’s privacy from new requirements for obtaining parental consent. They could ironically spell less privacy for parents as well as kids (i.e., more collection of parents’ personal info) in the well-intentioned pursuit of greater children’s privacy."


What do you think?  Can these proposals work?  Please add a comment on this blog and we can gather some more opinions, and of course, make your views known to COPPA.

***********

To make a public comment, and please do, go to: https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/2011copparulereview/

References: 

The proposed revisions: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/09/coppa.shtm

The FTC's business blog (brief version): http://business.ftc.gov/blog/2011/09/ftc-unveils-proposed-coppa-changes-comment

Submit your comments on the proposed revisions:  https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/2011copparulereview/

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Increasing Youth Safety and Responsible Behavior Online: A FOSI Discussion Paper

 In the recently published paper from the American Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), the authors of  Increasing Youth Safety and Responsible Behavior Online make some interesting points about the aims and evaluations of internet safety programmes.


As with the recent report from EU Kids Online, they distinguish between 'risk' and 'harm', and also take learnings from the failed anti-drugs campaigns of the 70's and 80's, which simply demonised drug use and were later shown to be largely ineffective, whereas later approaches have emphasized resistance skills, and changing peer group norms.

Here are a couple of extracts from the report which I found of interest:

What are the goals of Internet safety education?

A first step in moving to a culture of evidence is to be clear about our goals. When it comes to helping youth, some prevention goals are clear. Cigarette smoking, illegal drug use, or binge drinking are behaviors that science and public opinion agree cause harm.

In the Internet safety domain, there are some equally apparent and agreed upon goals. For example, reducing the number of youth who receive harassing messages online or who develop online sexual relationships with adults.

But other commonly cited goals in Internet safety may lack a similar consensus and scientific basis. We may think it is a good idea to encourage young people not to talk with strangers online and not to give out personal  information. But these are not established harms in and of themselves. They are risk behaviors that some people think may be related to harm.

In evaluating safety programs, ultimately we want to demonstrate that programs reduce harms and increase benefits, not that they just change “risk behavior”. Thus education programs need to target and measure the ultimate behaviors and conditions of concern.

Do’s and Don’ts in Prevention Education

While the field needs to begin the process of testing the most promising Internet safety programs with evaluation, there is still much we can do to improve what is already in place. Prevention research has provided us with excellent guidelines about what to do and not do:

1. Don’t use scare tactics. Do show examples of successful solutions and helpful actions by victims
and bystanders. Do show adults who are being helpful.

2. Don’t rely on one-shot assemblies. Do find ways to incorporate materials into a curriculum that
includes small group discussion, group activities and role-plays.

3. Don’t promote misleading, exaggerated or unsupported information. Do provide information on
rates, risk factors, and consequences that are based on the best and most current research.

4. Don’t use stereotyped impersonations of teenagers. Don’t over-simplify or over-dramatize
Internet safety problems and risks. Do depict typical situations, typical outcomes, and typical
teenagers. Do illustrate the complexity of the problems youth run into using new technology.

5. Don’t rely on gimmicks alone to get your message across. Do help youth build needed skills.
Do draw from what other evidence based programs are doing.


You can read the full discussion paper here: http://www.fosi.org/images/stories/resources/fosi_whitepaper_increasingyouthsafety_d6.pdf

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EU Kids Online: the top ten myths about child safety online

If you thought you knew it all about child safety online, the final EU Kids Online report from Sonia Livingstone at the LSE, published last month, may disabuse you. 

Professor Sonia Livingstone, who headed the project, said: “Most people have concerns about the internet and the effects it can have on a new digital generation of children. But are they concerned about the right things?

‘Our study showed that in general they are not. Often their view of how children behave online is out of date and needs updating – that’s why we included the list of Top 10 myths in our report. For example, while parents worry more about ‘stranger danger’, children find cyberbullying the most upsetting risk. Also, it’s
interesting to note that the parents who are most worried have children who encounter no more risks than children of parents who aren’t worried. “Often people also don’t appreciate that the digital world brings both risks and opportunities for young people, or that risk isn’t automatically a bad thing as it may give children a chance to learn how to cope and become resilient. It’s only by understanding and balancing these things that we’ll be able to give children the practical help they need to get the best from the internet and other online
activity.

“The work our team of researchers has done offers governments, parents and teachers the most comprehensive insight yet into how to help.”

The top 10 myths about children’s online risks:

1 Digital natives know it all.
Only 36 per cent of 9-16-year-olds say it is very true that they know more about the internet than their parents. This myth obscures children’s needs to develop digital skills.

2 Everyone is creating their own content
The study showed that only one in five children had recently used a file-sharing site or created an avatar, half that number wrote a blog. Most children use the internet for ready-made content.

3 Under 13s can’t use social networking sites
Although many sites (including Facebook) say that users must be aged at least 13, the survey shows that age limits don’t work – 38 per cent of 9-12-year-olds have a social networking profile. Some argue age limits should be scrapped to allow greater honesty and protective action.

4 Everyone watches porn online.
One in seven children saw sexual images online in the past year. Even allowing for under-reporting, this myth has been partly created by media hype.

5 Bullies are baddies
The study shows that 60 per cent who bully (online or offline) have themselves been bullied. Bullies and victims are often the same people.

6 People you meet on the internet are strangers.
Most online contacts are people children know face-to-face. Nine per cent met  offline people they’d first contacted online – most didn’t go alone and only one per cent had a bad experience.

7 Offline risks migrate online
This is not necessarily true. While children who lead risky offline lives are more likely to expose themselves to danger online, it cannot be assumed that those who are low-risk offline are protected while online.

8 Putting the PC in the living room will help
Children find it so easy to go online at a friend’s house or on a smartphone that this advice is out of date. Parents are better advised to talk to their children about their internet habits or join them in some online activity.

9 Teaching digital skills reduces online risk
Actually the more digital skills a child has, the more risks they are likely to encounter as they broaden their online experience. What more skills can do is reduce the potential harm that risks can bring.

10 Children can get around safety software
In fact, fewer than one in three 11-16 year-olds say they can change filter preferences. And most say their parents’ actions to limit their internet activity is helpful.

As Anne Collier has concluded from the report, it's really important for parents and educators to understand that without risk-taking, there can be no learning and development: just as in offline life, "opportunities and risks online go hand in hand," EU Kids Online reports. "Most activities children do online can be beneficial or harmful, depending on the circumstances…. This is vital for growing up if children are to learn to cope with the adult world. But risky opportunities are linked to vulnerability as well as resilience.

And also that risk and harm are two different things, and "risk must be distinguished from harm," the EU Kids Online researchers conclude. "As with riding a bike or crossing the road, everyday activities online carry a risk of harm, but this harm is far from inevitable – indeed, it is fairly rare."

The top 10 list is published as part of the final report of EU Kids Online – a research project based at the London School of Economics and Political Science which surveyed 25,000 children and their parents across Europe to understand where the true online risks and opportunities lie. Funded by the European Commission’s Safer Internet Programme, the project aims to give policy makers the best possible advice on how to educate and protect against risks such as bullying, pornographic or inappropriate content and making contacts with unsuitable people in the real world.For a copy of the full report and further information about EU Kids Online visit their site at www.eukidsonline.net

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The Bailey Review - moves towards protecting UK childhood

In June this year, the UK Department for Education published 'Letting Children be Children - Report of an Independent Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood' (aka "The Bailey Review" as it was led by Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of Mothers’ Union).  Today, two of its recommendations  appear to have made some kind of progress.


ISPs blocking adult content

 Today we hear that four leading web providers are to offer customers the option to block adult content at the point of subscription. BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin will offer the protection for smartphones, laptops and PCs, offering packages which enable certain websites to be filtered out. 

The filtering systems allow parents to choose to block any, all or no websites in broad categories of websites. Critics of filters say they often block access to innocent sites, those that could prove useful and never shield people from all inappropriate destinations.

Contrary to The Daily Mail's reporting, these services will be opt in, rather than opt out - that is to say, you'll have to say you DON'T want adult content, rather than that you do.   ISPs are keen to shrug of the notion of censorship: "The major service providers are accepting that their customers expect them to play their part in helping to ensure children are able to use the internet in a safe way," said Sebastien Lahtinen from Think Broadband. "It's worth noting that those determined to get around a filter will find a way of doing so, often quite trivially," said Mr Lahtinen. "As such, enforced filters are unlikely to deliver significant consumer benefit, whereas helping parents to protect their children helps their customers."
 
The Guardian is running an excellent analysis of the proposed filters.  Talk Talk say that they haven't changed their 'Home Safe' service at all:

"This is offering parents, as part of installation, a choice around whether to use controls or not. It will be an upfront decision they have to make. It's certainly not blocking porn and people having to opt in. The internet service still comes as it does, it's about giving parents a choice about using controls. We will ask every customer would you like parental controls?

"This is called 'active choice' rather than an opt-in or opt-out. We are the only ISP that offers network level protection. We offer a service called Home Safe which works on the internet connection rather than setting up controls for each device in a home. This covers every device in the home.

"We do already prompt Home Safe to customers it's part of the set-up we will be making that a more prominent feature. But it is already available to all customers."

Talk Talk's spokesperson added that people who want the filtering system on their internet provider would be asked to choose from categories such as suicide and self harm, weapons and violence, gambling and drugs and pornography. She insisted that the system would not block access to anti-drugs advice website, such as the government run Ask Frank service. It wouldn't block a BBC or Guardian article on web porn, but it would block pornographic sites. She couldn't say definitively that safer sex charities or information about contraception would be banned - parents' views on whether their older children need access to such information would differ - but added that parents could identify individual sites they wanted to blocked as well.  The Guardian asked what use a site-by-site block was pointing out that the internet is quite a big place, to which she acknowledged the limitations:

We're very upfront that this isn't a silver bullet that will solve internet safety. There isn't any technology that will absolutely protect your children. This is a useful tool that parents can choose to use coupled with education programmes as well

Charles Arthur, the Guardian's technology editor, said:

At first glance - especially a glance at the Daily Mail's front page headline - this looks radical [..] But the reality is much more subtle. If you're already on a contract with an ISP, nothing will change. Let's say that again: nothing will change. Only if you change ISP or move to a new contract will you be confronted with a decision - and even then, it will be a fork in the internet road, where you can either choose to have "parental controls" on your system, or choose not to have them. There is no obligation or presumption either way.

Children as 'Brand Ambassadors'

The Bailey review also urged an end to the practice of using under-16s as ‘brand ambassadors’ in social media, a recommendation specifically endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron in his praise of the report.  The Advertising Association (AA) has persuaded several companies not to use people under the age of 16 ‘to actively promote brands’. The AA’s progress was presented to Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this week, and today we learn that Weetabix has dropped its sponsorship of the seven-year-old twin boys which caused a few ruffled feathers when it was announced.

Parentport - reporting mechanism

The Prime Minister will also launch Parentport - a website to help parents complain about inappropriate content.Telecoms watchdog Ofcom said the launch of Parentport would make it easier for parents to complain about material they had seen across the media, communications and in retail.
It said the website had a "have your say" section where parents could give informal feedback and comments and also offered advice on keeping children safe online.

Rag Bailey is due to meet David Cameron at a Downing Street summit to discuss the changes.

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Facebook: Brand reputations lost in translation?

Facebook has introduced a service with Bing Translation that translates page status updates and also allows those reading to replace the machine translation with their own.   

Page admins can select to show only machine translated posts, or they can select to allow Facebook users to submit their own translations.  Currently, all Pages have been automatically opted in to allowing both machine and community translations, and the Translate button only appears to users with their language set to Korean, Japanese, Russian, Taiwanese and Chinese-Hong Kong.

Update 14/10/11: It looks as though Facebook have removed the facility for page admins to choose whether they wish Bing machine-translations and/or user translations to be made on their walls.  Now, it's a done deal, and Page admins need to go to Edit page>Manage permissions>'I want to manage my translations' in order to moderate any unsuitable user translations.  If you don't have any translations made (langauages available still  Korean, Japanese, Russian, Taiwanese and Chinese (Hong Kong) as far as I know - you won't have this option available.

No-one has yet made a translation of any of the eModeration Page's status updates, so I can't check how this works in practice.  If anyone cares to send me screenshots of what happens after you click on 'Manage my translations' to tia@emoderation.com, I'd be very grateful, so I can share the knowledge.  Thanks!

Inside Facebook announced this change today, and explained how it works:

"The languages offered are Korean, Japanese, Russian, Taiwanese and Chinese-Hong Kong.  If a person reading has his FB language set to one of these languages, they will automatically see the machine translation and be given the option to offer his own translation that can replace the machine version."



What is not so clear to me is the process by which user translations can replace machine translations.  Inside Facebook says:

"When someone clicks on the translate button on a public Page post, a Bing translation will appear in a popout window. People then have the opportunity to submit their own translation by opting-in to using inline translations. After their generated translation has received enough positive votes, it will replace the Bing translation and will appear each time someone clicks on the translate button associated with the post."

Does that mean that a number of possible user translations could exist beneath a status update, and if a certain number of users 'vote' on one particular one, then it replaces the machine translation?  But what happens to the other possible translations and are further translations still permitted?  I think I have to learn Korean quickly to see this in action, unless anyone can enlighten me ...?

Anyhow, whilst the benefits of this are obvious - brands may no longer have to fiddle around with geolocation and language postings and/or  having different Facebook pages per language, user translations should in theory improve on Bing's machine translations  - there are some quite strikingly Scary Things.


1.  The default is to allow the machine and the user translation.    You can turn this off, but you have to know it's switched on in the first place.  (Edit Page>Your settings)  I'm a Page admin, and I didn't see any information on this.  I know Facebook recently cut down on the emails they send out, but this would have been welcome ...

Update 13/10/11: As above, this service appears not to be optional any more.  Admins, keep checking for dodgy translations (which I assume you'll have to get translated to find out whether they are appropriate?)

2. Page owners are at immediate risk from some pretty serious griefing. According to the Help Center, "Admins will also see a “Manage Translations” link underneath their Page posts. From here they can approve or delete community-submitted translations or add their own. If admins find someone trying to submit objectionable content or spam as a translation, they can quickly block them from their Page and from submitting translations to other Pages as well."  Which is grand if they understand the language.  Well, actually, not even then. Since this looks like post-moderation,  the damage may already have been done before the admin even gets to the page, even supposing they can translate it.

I know, I shouldn't grumble.  Since eModeration is a multi-lingual community management and moderation agency, I suppose Facebook may have done us a favour.  But it's only fair to warn Page owners about the risks they may be facing.

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Facebook kills off Discussions Tab

Another week, another set of Facebook changes ... this time:

Discussion tab:
Facebook has begun notifying Page admins (via messages on the Page) that it will be removing the Discussions tab application from all Pages on October 31, 2011 and it appears that Pages can no longer install the app.

The in-house app, also known as Discussion Boards, allows Pages to host simple forums. However, Facebook says “The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your wall”. It will therefore eliminate the Discussions app, despite AppData showing that it has 22 million monthly active users.

What is a little more confusing is that it also says: "We've removed these tabs for now as we work on tools to help you moderate and filter content. Our goal is to help you can manage everything from one powerful place. Stay tuned."  So it's not entirely clear whether the Discussions tab will resurface in another, more manageable guise, or whether they will disappear completely.

As those who use a third-part tool to moderate Facebook Pages will know, the API from discussions doesn't get pulled into any tools and therefore has to be moderated from the front end.  It may be this problem - or simply inattention - which has led to the many instances we've seen of otherwise well-run brand/celebrity pages having a Discussion Tab full of slanging matches or customer complaints.

Discussion tabs - if they are moderated properly - do have a function, and it would be a shame for Facebook to pull them completely.

• They are far more easily archived than the wall, and  provide a good place for discussion about, for example product issues and developments
• They can also help to get difficult discussions off the Wall, if the community managers steers it: i.e ".... we can help you but please move the conversation here... "

However, they were, as I've said, hard to moderate, and much of the time ignored or abused by fans. One awkward little snag was that banning a fan from the wall didn't stop him or her publishing on your Discussion Tab, so they often the tab became a moderation resource-suck or had to be closed down temporarily. And it's true that brands weren't signposting them or alerting visitors to their use, so perhaps they were just a the 'appendix' of the Facebook Page - not really used for much, prone to flaring up, and we may be better off without them?

I see a real need though, for an area devoted to customer service issues, which should be kept away from the engaging conversation of the wall.  This would benefit both brands and users.  Users would know exactly where to go with their issues, and brands can easily find and respond to them, leaving the more positive conversations to go on elsewhere. And PLEASE make it easy to moderate, with the API available to third party tools and banning functions!  This area would need to be clearly and regularly signposted through from Page walls, but I think it could work well.  You?

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