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Facebook Surveys Users About Child Predators, Outrage Ensues

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 08 2018, @04:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-we-meant-to-say-was-... dept.

takyon writes:

Facebook asks users: should we allow men to ask children for sexual images?

Facebook has admitted it was a "mistake" to ask users whether paedophiles requesting sexual pictures from children should be allowed on its website.

On Sunday, the social network ran a survey for some users asking how they thought the company should handle grooming behaviour. "There are a wide range of topics and behaviours that appear on Facebook," one question began. "In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook's policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures."

The options available to respondents ranged from "this content should not be allowed on Facebook, and no one should be able to see it" to "this content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it".

A second question asked who should decide the rules around whether or not the adult man should be allowed to ask for such pictures on Facebook. Options available included "Facebook users decide the rules by voting and tell Facebook" and "Facebook decides the rules on its own".

Also at The Verge, TechCrunch, The Mercury News, CNBC, and Engadget.

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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:28PM

    by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:28PM (#649491) Homepage Journal

    There's some reasonable explanations why you'd ask this question:
    1) You're affiliated with law enforcement and you want to see how many idiot pedos answer "yes", so you can investigate them
    2) You want to get an idea if there's more pedophilia in society than we're currently aware of

    Seriously, asking this question on FB is so suspicious I find it hard to believe there really isn't some ulterior motive or plan here.

    There's another possibility:
    3) You've automated the creation of surveys to include questions/feature requests from users and don't bother to check the questions before sending them to users.

    I'm not saying that's the most likely answer, but it certainly would be in line with previous FB idiocy.

    That said, I agree that this appears to be quite suspicious.

    However, the truth of Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org] should never be minimized, especially as this is routinely confirmed [quoteinvestigator.com]:

    Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe!

    At the same time, it does make you wonder about how closely FB is working with various LEOs and TLAs. They've certainly been quite accommodating to the Chinese as they put the screws to their people.

    However, stupidity and malice aren't mutually exclusive. Dumb *and* evil. Hooray for us!

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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