Facebook Threatens Daily Mail With Lawsuit Over Sex Predator Expose

Facebook has threatened to sue the Daily Mail after the news site published an article that wrongfully identified Facebook as a gateway for minors to be solicited by online sexual predators.

The article was written by Mark Williams-Thomas, a former police detective, who originally claimed in the piece to have gone 'undercover' as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. Williams-Thomas said that within an hour of his fake profile going live, messages from men offering to 'perform sex acts' quickly 'poured in,' 'followed up with crude sexual requests.' 'The scale of potential abuse is mind-blowing,' Williams-Thomas wrote.

Up until it was changed earlier today, the article was titled, 'I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.' (It now reads: 'I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you.')

The catch? It seems Williams-Thomas wasn't actually using Facebook, but a different social networking site altogether.

Facebook was none too pleased. A spokesperson for the site told the Guardian that Facebook was considering suing the Daily Mail for the 'brand damage that has been done.' 'If you were a Middle England reader and your child was on Facebook, this sort of thing would have a very serious effect on what you thought of us,' the spokesperson also said, according to the Guardian.

The numerous references to Facebook in the sex predator article's title, URL, and text have since been removed by Daily Mail editors, who have also added a clarification that reads:

In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.

Williams-Thomas claims that Daily Mail editors added the references to Facebook contained in his article. The mistake was explained as 'a matter of miscommunication.'

Comments

[Peter Finarovsky]

12:24 PM on 03/13/2010

I'm so sick and tired of all this online sex predator hysteria! If anyone is being harassed, they can just go to a different site, or report the person harassing them. It's nothing like being stalked or harassed in real life which is a legitimate concern.

[EvilEuropean]

03:33 AM on 03/13/2010

Daily Mail = Fox News

[Doug Stead]

02:33 PM on 03/12/2010

Incorrect attribution in this case, to Facebook, doesn't negate the sad fact that sexual predictors have, do and will continue to hunt and predate vulnerable children on Facebook and every other social nertworking site.

[Rajesh Kumar]

03:46 AM on 03/12/2010

not good

[RobinSeattle]

05:47 PM on 03/11/2010

Facebook will have a nice payday since it is easier to prove libel in British courts than it is here in the states.

[mujahidjohar]

08:12 AM on 03/12/2010

yes. But then at least this is genuine libel (Daily Mail saying it was Facebook, when it was actually a completely different social networking site altogether).

That said, the libel laws in the UK are disgustingly easy to manipulate.

What I don't get is, why they won't name the social networking site, for fear of causing unnecessary fear and damage of reputation to the unnamed site. Surely they've already done that to the wrong site, Facebook?

[owiseone]

03:56 PM on 03/11/2010

I believe it!

While"monitoring" a fourteen year old family member's facebook page, I was able to pull up her friends and their friends of friends. All 350+ "friends' profiles were accessible and shared by this group of schoolchildren.

One boy talked about raping someone with an umbrella, and it got more graphic from there. Earlier and about another comment, I had reported this kid to facebook. They did nothing. Now the reporting function does not work.

Guess it's time to call the police; contact parents; file a lawsuit?

[turboturd]

04:25 PM on 03/11/2010

Did he actually show up with and umbrella???

Free speech!

[owiseone]

05:53 PM on 03/11/2010

He mentioned one particular person; I see this as a direct threat; this is not "free speech".

Would you wait till some child's life has been ruined before doing something?

As with the terrorists who attacked the US on 9/11--do we wait as Bush did for the event to occur before taking the information, the "free speech" seriously? (I know that sounds hokey, but I once warned an official about a group I thought potentially dangerous and the frustrating answer was that nothing could be done until something happened--in this day of terror-watch that information would have been taken seriously)

[mujahidjohar]

03:28 PM on 03/11/2010

To people not from the UK who does not know what the Daily Mail is about, then I tell you, we here are not surprised by the Daily Mail being deceptive, bitter and paranoid. They have mastered the art of scaremongering.

In fact, The Daily Mail has also listed Facebook as one of the causes for cancer (!). And this isn''t even one of the most ridiculous claims.

This group tries to list all the things the Daily Mail claims to cause cancer. In fact, the list is so big, they had to make a second group.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=269512464297

[dtmfman]

03:19 PM on 03/11/2010

it probably happens on any site in which direct/one on one communication can be done...hell..it could probably happen here if you could send pvt msgs....

The pervasiveness of sexual predators shouldn't startle anyone....just look at catholic priests....hell...they don't even need a computer...

[Magick1]

04:06 PM on 03/11/2010

Agreed, happens in neighborhoods, schools, parents, relatives. If Facebook is a gateway, so is any other social web site or interactive forum. The job is for the parent to know the people their children are around, what they are reading, watching, TV, and computer. The internet brings a new venue for communication that parents need to monitor, technology makes it more difficult than it used to be.