Social Media Misuse

Balmed Out

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/facebook-images-of-young-cork-girls-posted-on-porn-site-376096.html

Basically someone set up a fake facebook page, befriended a lot of girls, downloaded all their photos and then posted them on some porn site.

I was talking to two girls who are friends with some of the victims. One of these two has more then 5000 friends and the other a little less but still a few thousand. They accept friend requests based on nothing more then having friends in common so even though they have all the privacy settings its not worth anything.

As a relatively new company which has expanded massively its perhaps understandable that Facebook might not have its act together to properly guard against misuse and im not sure what they could do but one thing that surprised me is that as both these girls have gotten older they have become aware that having so many 'friends' may not be the best idea but not wanting to delete their profiles and start again apparently there's no way of removing multiple friends at the same time so they don't bother.

Obviously parents need to do more to monitor and guard against misuse but given many of them are computer illiterate or too busy posting pictures of the kids themselves what should facebook do? What should lawmakers do?

Id suggest removing the option of having personal profiles visible to non friends, a second tier of friendship for acquaintances and a limited number of full friends who can see photos etc as well as the ability to remove multiple friends easily.

What do you think yourself am I being too nannystatish ?

biko

I only am friends on FB with people that I have actually met IRL and want to be connected with.
So muppets on FB isn't really an issue for me.

Balmed Out

Yeah less then 200 myself but its people a lot younger then you or I that are leaving themselves open to being exploited.

c_man

I'm not "victim blaming" here, I want to address one thing in particular. I don't see how this in anyway is Facebook's fault tbh.

there's no way of removing multiple friends at the same time so they don't bother.

Dunno about that and besides, there is no cure for laziness. There are Groups to which you put friends and apply different privacy settings.

syklops

As a relatively new company which has expanded massively its perhaps understandable that Facebook might not have its act together to properly guard against misuse

Ah here. You can't protect against stupidity. Who thinks having 5000 friends on a social medium is a good idea?

JustShon

There should probably be a friend limit. Let's be honest, they can't actually KNOW all of those 5,000 people.

If you want to reach / interact with a larger number of people that's what pages are for.

The_Valeyard

Im not sure I even know 5000 people personally?????


Just add people you know, noboday cares how many connections or friends you have.

But no new laws. Not needed. Just common sense.

LDN_Irish

I don't want to be too flippant but stupid people do stupid things. I don't what would make a person think adding someone who they don't know to their friends list giving them access to everything they show (which in a lot of these cases is everything they do) is a good idea.

kneemos

Are they not secretly flattered that someone is tearing furiously at their genitals over their pictures?

c_man

JustShon wrote: »

There should probably be a friend limit.

They had (still think it's in place) a limit, and people still bitched and moaned about how to get past it (e.g. "How do I break the FB friend limit?" ).

LDN_Irish

kneemos wrote: »

Are they not secretly flattered that someone is tearing furiously at their genitals over their pictures?

No, they're horrified apparently. I saw the post get shared and it's a generically named Brian Murphy with a generic Conor McGregor profile pic. "OMG Lisa! He could have posted pictures of any of us!" "Nooooo! I don't believe ya!"

Balmed Out

syklops wrote: »

Ah here. You can't protect against stupidity. Who thinks having 5000 friends on a social medium is a good idea?

Generally teenagers who are probably too young to legitimately use facebook. If one does it pretty soon half their friends will do too.

There are a lot of things which have protective features built in to protect against stupidity should things like facebook not be the same.

LDN_Irish

Balmed Out wrote: »

Generally teenagers who are probably too young to legitimately use facebook. If one does it pretty soon half their friends will do too.

You'd think so but you've ti be 13 to use FB and I could go through my list of 130 odd (half of whom I could lose and probably nobody would notice) and find plenty of people in their 20's with 1000 plus "friends." I've only got people I actually know, who I'd stop to chat to if I passed them in the street but even that's risky if I'm stupid. I couldn't guarantee that not a single one of them would either burgle me o tell someone to burgle me if I wrote "going to Lanzaratty for tree weaks hunzos xxx >3"

A Shaved Duck?

Yer one was on 98fm there and to be honest she still has 2700 "friends" and is a lingerie model..

They were putting the point across that if your gonna accept friend requests from any tom dick or harry you have to accept some responsibility that these pictures can be taken and end up anywhere.

but her argument was that she can do what she wanted and didnt care or something... stupid people being stupid basically.

Balmed Out

LDN_Irish wrote: »

"going to Lanzaratty for tree weaks hunzos xxx >3"

Thats another thing, I have intelligent friends with Masters degrees who check in at airports. Good god.

Duggy747

Not a new thing at all that prowlers download pictures off of people's social media profiles and upload them to porn sites, that's what happens when you befriend anyone who asks for an invite / don't take note of your privacy settings.

Facebook can have all the guards and safety nets in place but people will still abuse the system.

It's also still down to it's users to have the responsibility on what they personally share and to understand what they're uploading to the public................but we know parent's and whatnot will deem this to be all Facebook and the big scary internet's fault.

I await the inevitable politician to hop on the bandwagon to call for something stupid like an internet curfew: "Can we close Ireland's internet at 9pm?" :pac:

wil

biko wrote: »

I only am friends on FB with people that I have actually met IRL and want to be connected with.
So muppets on FB isn't really an issue for me.

I only am friends on FB with muppets I have met IRL. Big muppet fan

valoren

My niece is 18 and my cousins kids are 17 and 19. We're FB 'friends'
So you would regularly see them liking their friends profile pictures.

Jesus wept. It must be a competition to see who can post the most risque pictures in a lot of cases.
Posting up such pictures and assuming they are private is incredibly naive and that it would attract the interest of unsavoury people should not be a major surprise.

Balmed Out

Duggy747 wrote: »

It's also still down to it's users to have the responsibility on what they personally share and to understand what they're uploading to the public................but we know parent's and whatnot will deem this to be all Facebook and the big scary internet's fault.

A lot of people don't understand though. I can also post pictures of you or anyone else up.

LDN_Irish

Balmed Out wrote: »

A lot of people don't understand though. I can also post pictures of you or anyone else up.

Now, that is something that FB should be removing! I should not be able to share your picture using FB features. Obviously someone could screenshot or download anything they want but I don't think FB should be implementing features that allow a FB user to internally share any other FB users pics.

strelok

LDN_Irish wrote: »

Now, that is something that FB should be removing! I should not be able to share your picture using FB features. Obviously someone could screenshot or download anything they want but I don't think FB should be implementing features that allow a FB user to internally share any other FB users pics.

im reasonably sure that feature already exists, balmed out was just talking about actually taking a photo of you and putting it on his own facebook page

222233

Terrible story, irrespective of who one is friends with on Facebook it should be acceptable to assume that the photos you put on your private page don't end up on porn sites

Sadly though Facebook own any photos one shares perhaps this is where the law needs changing it makes it quite difficult to argue cases when your pics end up in other places.

syklops

Balmed Out wrote: »

Generally teenagers who are probably too young to legitimately use facebook. If one does it pretty soon half their friends will do too.

There are a lot of things which have protective features built in to protect against stupidity should things like facebook not be the same.

Faebook has a wide array of security features. You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make him update his facebooks security policies.

LDN_Irish

strelok wrote: »

im reasonably sure that feature already exists, balmed out was just talking about actually taking a photo of you and putting it on his own facebook page

I'm saying that you should be completely unable to share someone who isn't on your friends list pictures. As it stands now by default I can go randomly search names on FB and I could share anyones pics to my own timeline. If there's a way of turning that off then very few people seem to know that because even when people have everything locked down so that only their profile pic is visible, you can still share it.

mcgovern

222233 wrote: »

Terrible story, irrespective of who one is friends with on Facebook it should be acceptable to assume that the photos you put on your private page don't end up on porn sites

If you physically gave a copy of your photos to all your friends, would you still think it's reasonable to assume those photo's won't be misused? Especially if all one had to do to qualify as your friend (and thus see the photos) was ask if they could be your friend?
People need to take responsibility for their own actions.

syklops

Duggy747 wrote: »

Not a new thing at all that prowlers download pictures off of people's social media profiles and upload them to porn sites, that's what happens when you befriend anyone who asks for an invite / don't take note of your privacy settings.

Facebook can have all the guards and safety nets in place but people will still abuse the system.

It's also still down to it's users to have the responsibility on what they personally share and to understand what they're uploading to the public................but we know parent's and whatnot will deem this to be all Facebook and the big scary internet's fault.

I await the inevitable politician to hop on the bandwagon to call for something stupid like an internet curfew: "Can we close Ireland's internet at 9pm?" :pac:

Fidelma Healy-Eams in 5...4....3....2....

silverharp

Kind of meh, my view is don't put anything on social media that you would be ashamed of your future employer seeing
If their HR dept did a trawl before interviewing you.

JustShon

silverharp wrote: »

Kind of meh, my view is don't put anything on social media that you would be ashamed of your future employer seeing
If their HR dept did a trawl before interviewing you.

No teenager is thinking about what future employers are going to think.

This was a teenager after all, not an adult. Probably wouldn't have made the news otherwise.

Icaras

Im sure it's in Facebooks term's and conditions that the can do what they want with the pics you have posted up. If people don't understand how social media works but still use it they get no sympathy from me when it all goes wrong, because if there is one place where things will get out of control it's the Internet.

NomadicGray

I think Facebook do generally have their act together on this issur, but teenage girls certainly don't.
Parents need to presume their kids are dumb as hell with such matters & educate/supervise them.

222233

mcgovern wrote: »

If you physically gave a copy of your photos to all your friends, would you still think it's reasonable to assume those photo's won't be misused? Especially if all one had to do to qualify as your friend (and thus see the photos) was ask if they could be your friend?
People need to take responsibility for their own actions.

I think thats actually just victim blaming now. There is never an excuse for deliberately taking someones photo for the intention of distribution on some sick and twisted website. Never.

Duggy747

Balmed Out wrote: »

A lot of people don't understand though. I can also post pictures of you or anyone else up.

All download options could be disabled / be made more difficult but if a person really wanted the picture they could easily open up the page source to find it's URL or just Print Screen it.

Not to victim blame, but these kinds of things will always happen so at the end of the day it's down to privacy, who you trust in your circle of friends (or the hundreds / thousands of people you just added because you met them once / they're a friend of a friend of a friend), and that people understand the risks involved of using social media.

222233

NomadicGray wrote: »

I think Facebook do generally have their act together on this issur, but teenage girls certainly don't.
Parents need to presume their kids are dumb as hell with such matters & educate/supervise them.

If the photos had been taken off a school or sports website would you say the same thing?

Balmed Out

Teenagers get caught up in things and try to out do each other etc. Stupid ?, yes but still human nature.
If Im stupid enough to drink too much in a pub its the responsibility of the publican to stop serving me, surely it should be facebooks responsibility to stop facilitating these people too if feasible (not sure to what degree it is though).

Surely there's no excusing facebook for having to unfriend one by one?

TG1

222233 wrote: »

I think thats actually just victim blaming now. There is never an excuse for deliberately taking someones photo for the intention of distribution on some sick and twisted website. Never.

There isn't an excuse for what someone did to those girls but I don't think it's victim blaming to say young girls shouldn't be accepting friend requests from randomers they don't know when that grants a total stranger access to their private photos etc.

It's not like privacy issues with social media is something that has only just cropped up, every teenager with access to Facebook has heard similar stories before.

silverharp

JustShon wrote: »

No teenager is thinking about what future employers are going to think.

This was a teenager after all, not an adult. Probably wouldn't have made the news otherwise.

My kids aren't teenagers yet but I can't see myself letting them use their real names on line if and when they ask. My internet my rules.....

222233

TG1 wrote: »

There isn't an excuse for what someone did to those girls but I don't think it's victim blaming to say young girls shouldn't be accepting friend requests from randomers they don't know when that grants a total stranger access to their private photos etc.

It's not like privacy issues with social media is something that has only just cropped up, every teenager with access to Facebook has heard similar stories before.

Indeed but I don't think we should have to discuss privacy we should be discussing the sick minds of those taking and using these photos.

Balmed Out

NomadicGray wrote: »

I think Facebook do generally have their act together on this issur, but teenage girls certainly don't.
Parents need to presume their kids are dumb as hell with such matters & educate/supervise them.

Who's educating the parents though. Most parents I know constantly post pictures of their kids so its hard to blame these same kids fishing for likes when posting their own pictures. Look at After hours and the same people fishing for thanks with witty one liners on the front page of every second thread.

El Weirdo

silverharp wrote: »

My internet my rules.....

Al?

jester77

Balmed Out wrote: »

Id suggest removing the option of having personal profiles visible to non friends, a second tier of friendship for acquaintances and a limited number of full friends who can see photos etc as well as the ability to remove multiple friends easily.

What do you think yourself am I being too nannystatish ?

You can do that already. But if people are too dumb not to do this and just accept every request there is, then there is not much you can do.

NomadicGray

222233 wrote: »

If the photos had been taken off a school or sports website would you say the same thing?

I think if you put something in the Internet in any capacity you have to presume it's vulnerable to misuse. That should be the default stance.
So yeah, I guess I do

I don't think a school will post pictures a porno site find useful, but there's other examples of course

LDN_Irish

222233 wrote: »

Indeed but I don't think we should have to discuss privacy we should be discussing the sick minds of those taking and using these photos.

Ok, you tell us what ideas you have on preventing the sick minds of those taking people's pictures online and I won't post anything that I wouldn't want to end up on a pornsite and we'll see who reaches their goal first.

I've already won this race but I'm still interested to hear your ideas.

222233

NomadicGray wrote: »

I don't think a school will post pictures a porno site find useful, but there's other examples of course

And what was useful in terms of porn in these girls selfies?

gramar

There needs to be an internet licence. Children under 12 must wear a seatbelt. Those on provisional licences must be accompanied by an adult.

Balmed Out

NomadicGray wrote: »

I don't think a school will post pictures a porno site find useful, but there's other examples of course

As far as im aware most of these photos were fairly innocuous pictures of teenage girls, the porn element being users commentating on what they would like to do to/with them.

Duggy747

222233 wrote: »

Indeed but I don't think we should have to discuss privacy we should be discussing the sick minds of those taking and using these photos.

That's the problem, people aren't discussing or considering privacy.

222233

Duggy747 wrote: »

That's the problem, people aren't discussing or considering privacy.

The original were completely innocent from what I have heard why should you have to hide your face just because there are people out there who need psychiatric help?

smash

I have a 16yr old cousin who's been on Facebook for around 3 years. Personally I think it's irresponsible to allow it from a parental point of view but some people see nothing wrong with it. She uploads all her wes and kiddie disco photos and has hundreds of friends, most of whom she doesn't know and quite a lot are pages called "young Dublin Yuss" and other such tripe where the girls tag the page to appear on their feed. The pages are probably set up and run by creeps and it's FB's responsibility in a way to monitor community pages to remove the likes of this, and to remove users who are clearly under their age policy, but they don't.

NomadicGray

Balmed Out wrote: »

Who's educating the parents though. Most parents I know constantly post pictures of their kids so its hard to blame these same kids fishing for likes when posting their own pictures. Look at After hours and the same people fishing for thanks with witty one liners on the front page of every second thread.

Parents could be educated by stories like this, but they'll forget & whine when it happens again in a few years.
I'm astounded by people's desires for thanks /likes /shares on social media

LDN_Irish

222233 wrote: »

The original were completely innocent from what I have heard why should you have to hide your face just because there are people out there who need psychiatric help?

You've just answered your own question. The only person who's conduct you can control is your own. The behaviour of your 3000 "friends" is completely out of your control.

222233

NomadicGray wrote: »

Parents could be educated by stories like this, but they'll forget & whine when it happens again in a few years.
I'm astounded by people's desires for thanks /likes /shares on social media

So the issue is people exploring their individuality and not people taking these photos for inappropriate use?