Facebook says it mistakenly asked users for views on grooming

In today’s episode of ‘wtf was the tech industry thinking’, Facebook has been caught asking users if they think it’s okay for an adult man to ask a 14-year-old girl for “sexual pictures” in a private chat.

The Guardian reported that Facebook ran the survey on Sunday asking a portion of its users how they thought it should handle grooming behavior.

One question received by a Facebook user who was sent the survey read: “In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook’s policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14 year old girl for sexual pictures.”

Facebook offered four multiple choice responses that users could select, ranging from being able to approve of such content being allowed on Facebook to saying it should not be allowed or stating they have no preference.

The company declined to answer any specific questions, though we understand the survey was sent to thousands not millions of Facebook’s 2.1BN global users.

It’s also unclear whether the company links any of the information it gathers from product surveys like these to individual Facebook users’ profiles for ad targeting purposes. We’ve asked Facebook and will update this post if it provides clarification of how else it might use this kind of user generated data.



Source: techcrunch

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