Facebook Agrees To Measures Aimed At Keeping Young Users Safe

Facebook has reached an agreement with the attorneys general of 49 states to institute a broad set of principles intended to protect young users from predators and inappropriate material online. Users under the age of 18 will be required to acknowledge reading Facebook's safety tips at sign up and the site will also display a prominent “report abuse” icon devised by the attorney general of New Jersey. Facebook will be closely monitoring users who drastically change their age on their accounts and has promised to take down offensive material within 24 hours of it's discovery. Facebook is said to be working on profiling technology to help it determine when someone is not telling the truth about their age. “We envision this as an ongoing process. We purposely built into this agreement the opportunity to raise and address new issues,” Connecticut attorney general, Richard Blumenthal said. “If we see a problem they’ll hear from us.” New York Times article here.

MySpace and States Agree on Safety Guidelines

According to the Globe and Mail, and many other sources, MySpace and 49 state Attorney's have agreed on a broad set of guidelines to help protect youth online. "MySpace, ..., agreed to take further steps to ensure safety, including developing an e-mail registry that would allow parents to prohibit their children from creating an online profile for the network, according to the attorneys general." With 110 million global users and much popularity with the younger set, MySpace was a natural target for the states. “This is an industry-wide challenge and we must all work together to create a safer Internet,” MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement. Texas was the only holdout state.