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<\/a><\/span><\/div>\nWhile Facebook facilitates facial recognition and vacuums up user data by the exa-byte (look it up), they draw the line at being asked to clamp down on child porn being passed around on its servers.<\/p>\n
In a shocking story putting the massive social network in a very seedy light, Gizmodo reported<\/a> last week, \u201cWhen BBC journalists discovered child porn on the network and sent those images to Facebook last week, the company reported the BBC to police in the UK for the distribution of illegal images.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s right. When informed that pedophiles were passing around pictures of children in the vilest, most unholy ways, Facebook shot the messenger. Well, Facebook asked police to do it for them \u2014\u00a0metaphorically of course.<\/p>\n Investigative reporters from the BBC have a long history of tracking down the perverts that seem to pervade the Internet. After discovering that there was a significant amount of such images floating around Facebook, the network notified executives at the company, offering to sit down and show Facebook\u2019s representatives the evidence of pedophilia collected by BBC reporters.<\/p>\n Again, from Gizmodo:<\/p>\n Simon Milner [a Facebook representative], finally agreed to sit down for an interview about moderation tools on the network. There was just one condition: Facebook asked that the BBC reporters send the company images that they\u2019d found on Facebook\u2019s secret groups that the BBC would like to discuss.<\/p>\n The BBC complied with Facebook\u2019s request, sent the images to the company, and then, almost unbelievably, Facebook backed out of the scheduled sit down and reported the BBC to the police!<\/p>\n In explanation of its extraordinary actions, Facebook issued a statement explaining, \u201cIt is against the law for anyone to distribute images of child exploitation.\u201d<\/p>\n Imagine informing your neighbor that you saw someone break into his house and then offering to show him the evidence of the crime and then he calls the police, claiming you were the criminal!<\/p>\n Facebook says it is sufficiently policing child pornography and pedophilia by providing a \u201cReport Button\u201d on the site whereby users can identify potential pedophiles and \u201cnudity and other sexually suggestive content.\u201d<\/p>\n A report button. That\u2019s multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s answer to demonstrable accusations of pedophilia rings maintained on Facebook\u2019s servers and classified as \u201csecret\u201d groups.<\/p>\n BBC apparently considered the \u201cReport Button\u201d likely to prove unreliable, therefore the news organ\u00a0conducted its own experiment on its effectiveness.<\/a> The BBC reports:<\/p>\n To test Facebook’s claim, the BBC used the report button to alert the company to 100 images which appeared to break its guidelines. They included:<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0pages explicitly for men with a sexual interest in children<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0images of under-16s in highly sexualised [sic] poses, with obscene comments posted beside them<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0groups with names such as “hot xxxx schoolgirls” containing stolen images of real children<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0an image that appeared to be a still from a video of child abuse, with a request below it to share “child pornography.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the 100 images only 18 were removed.<\/p>\n Facebook told the BBC that the other 82 images didn\u2019t cross the company\u2019s \u201cinappropriate\u201d threshold.<\/p>\n Undeterred, the BBC continued its test of Facebook\u2019s accountability on the issue of child pornography and pedophilia:<\/p>\n Facebook’s rules forbid convicted sex offenders from having accounts.<\/p>\n But the BBC found five convicted paedophiles [sic] with profiles, and reported them to Facebook via its own system. None of them were taken down.<\/p>\n “I find it very disturbing, I find that content unacceptable,” said Mr Collins in response.<\/p>\n “I think it raises the question of how can users make effective complaints to Facebook about content that is disturbing, shouldn’t be on the site, and have confidence that that will be acted upon.\u201d<\/p>\n David Jordan, the BBC Director of Editorial Policy, is concerned about the cause of Facebook\u2019s bizarre reaction to receiving undeniable evidence of pedophilia and child pornography on its servers.<\/p>\n “The fact that Facebook sent images that had been sent to them, that appear on their site, for their response about how Facebook deals with inappropriate images … the fact that they sent those on to the police seemed to me to be extraordinary,” he said.<\/p>\n “One can only assume that the Facebook executives were unwilling or certainly reluctant to engage in an interview or a debate about why these images are available on the Facebook site.\u201d<\/p>\n