What Facebook does with abuse reports

The head of Facebook's international law enforcement group, Max Kelly, Friday revealed more details than I've seen in the news media on how the site detects bad behavior and content, including criminal activity. On the prevention side, The Guardian reports, "Facebook has developed sophisticated algorithms to monitor its users and detect inappropriate and predatory behaviour, bolstering its latest raft of initiatives to improve the safety of its users." For details on what FB does about that behavior, please see the article, which includes pushback from CEOP but also signs of momentum toward a working rather than adversarial relationship. Only the former will help remove layers and redundancies in abuse reporting, as well as help educate the public on where and how to report what. Historians could probably tell us that it took time for the public to know what to report to 911/999 and, for example, what to report to school authorities, and here the system and education will need to be multinational and multicultural. This is a followup to my post last week about the "panic button" problem.

YouTube's new help & reporting tool

YouTube has a new "Abuse & Safety" help section with simple, straightforward advice on what to do about anything from impersonation to hateful comments to violations of the site's Community Guidelines. YouTube says it wanted to make it easier for users not only to flag abusive content of any kind, but also to deal with stuff that comes up, WebProNews reports. In its coverage of this and other sites' efforts to ease reporting, the Wall Street Journal reports that YouTube says it "has 'a zero-tolerance policy for predatory behavior, stalking, threats and harassment' and reacts to most flags in less than an hour' ... [and] videos raising 'more complicated' issues may take longer." Perhaps one meaning of "more complicated" is imposter profile reports - YouTube says they need to come from the person being impersonated - it's not always easy for customer service staff to tell who's doing the reporting and whether it's sincere or a form of abuse itself. The Journal also explains how MySpace and Facebook have gotten more abuse-report-friendly.