The privacy Mark Zuckerberg is promising Facebook users could prove a nightmare for child-trafficking victims — unless he follows some practical tips from New Haven-based Love 146.
The anti-trafficking organization Tuesday asked Facebook “to make three changes to its default settings that would stop predators from easily finding children and grooming them through private conversations.”
Following is a release from the group making the case:
Facebook Challenged to Do More to Protect Children From Online Predators
NEW HAVEN, CT — The international anti-trafficking organization Love146 has launched a campaign and petition asking Facebook to protect children from predators online. “Of the children we work with who were recruited online, many tell us that Facebook is the platform their traffickers used to first reach out to them and groom them,” says Erin Williamson, Love146’s US programs director. “We’re sick of hearing this same story from victims. It’s outrageous that Facebook’s default privacy settings for children make them vulnerable to exploitation.”
Love146 has more than 15 years of experience working with children who have been trafficked and sexually exploited.
Protecting children on Facebook is even more urgent after the platform announced last week that it is going to introduce encrypted messaging. Encryption will make it more difficult for law enforcement to investigate messages, so it will be important that predators who attempt to interact with children on the platform are pushed out of encrypted conversations and into visible spaces, like comments.
Currently, children on Facebook do have different default settings than adults, but they don’t yet provide the necessary protection. Williamson says Facebook can make three changes to its default settings that would stop predators from easily finding children and grooming them through private conversations. Each of these changes, she said, need to be made the “default” setting in order to be effective.
1. Facebook needs to stop children’s friends lists from being public. Currently, predators can find children with ease using friends lists. Children that Love146 works with often cite “mutual friends” as one of the primary criteria they use for determining if someone is “safe” to accept as a “friend.” Public friends lists provide predators with a road map they can use to connect with children they are seeking to exploit. Predators simply go through a friends list and “friend” request several children. When a few of these requests are accepted, they can then reach out to the targeted children, who are now more likely to accept these requests because of “mutual friends.”
2. Facebook needs to create a new privacy setting: “Who can see me on other people’s friends lists?” – and set the default to “Only my friends.” In addition, even when someone sets their friends list as not public, they can still be seen on others’ friends lists without any control. This is a critical missing feature for all users and a huge safety issue for children in particular.
3. Facebook needs to allow children to receive direct messages only from close friends. Predators use Facebook’s messaging feature to privately connect with and groom children for exploitation. The social network has already built in the ability to label people as “close friends.” However, Love146 says that the majority of the children they work with are unaware of this feature. “When a friend request is sent to a child, they should have to specify if someone is a ‘close friend,’” says Williamson, “and have the default set so that only ‘close friends’ can send messages through the platform.” Messages sent by anyone else should go to the “message requests” folder, where they don’t trigger notifications and youth would feel less compelled to find and respond to them.
Love146 has sent two letters to Facebook requesting these changes and did not receive a response. The organization is asking people to sign their petition, which can be found at www.love146.org/facebook, and let Facebook know to #ProtectChildrenByDefault.