<h2 class="p" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
	WATERY. There isn&#39;t any other way to describe Ask.fm&#39;s new &#39;solutions&#39; to its online bullying problem.</h2>
<div>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		The&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Latvia" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Latvia</a>-based social network, repeatedly linked to serious online bullying and teen suicides, yesterday announced a set of safety tweaks. They won&#39;t work. They are made up of bland, weak modifications to a wildly popular but incendiary service.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		In a nutshell, the site has repackaged its existing remedies in shinier wrapping.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		It has offered to make existing &#39;report abuse&#39; buttons more visible. Ditto for its anonymity opt-out options. And it has given a vague undertaking to hire more staff (without saying how many), who might help moderate the site better.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		It said that it would respond to abuse reports (without saying how) within 24 hours and would create a new sub-site for parents.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		These are half-baked enhancements. A handful of moderating staff won&#39;t help a site growing by one million users per week. Reminding people of the possibility of non-anonymous commenting won&#39;t decrease anonymous commenting.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		No, Ask.Fm&#39;s response is a fairly shallow PR exercise aimed at side-stepping the only real changes that count: its use of anonymity.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		The reason for this is simple. Anonymous interaction is the lifeblood of the company&#39;s success.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		And boy, is it working: Ask.fm&#39;s user base is exploding. At the last count, it was 65 million. By the time you read this, it may well be another million bigger. In this context, you can see why Ask.fm is going to try and hold out against substantial reform of its service. The question is: what should society&#39;s response be?</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		One touted option is to encourage advertisers to pull out. In this context, Vodafone, Specsavers and a handful of other advertisers have already said that they would not authorise their ads on the site any longer. However, just six companies have declared an (undefined) boycott of Ask.fm.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		There remain many, many more companies still advertising on the site, possibly without even knowing it. Unless hundreds of big brands start a focused boycott, this won&#39;t work: when the hubbub dies down in six weeks, it will quietly be business as usual.</p>
	<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">
		Another option floated is to consider banning Ask.fm. Legally, this is a non-starter under European law. It is also a little two-faced. Most Irish adults now use&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Facebook" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Facebook</a>. A large minority use Twitter. Both of these networks are also used to troll on a daily basis. It does not make any sense to call for the banning of Ask.fm and not Twitter or Facebook.</p>
	<div class="more" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 10.909090995788574px;">
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			So is it simply hopeless? Not quite. But it is not just Ask.fm that needs to change its ways here.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			It may sound unpalatable, but we as parents cannot any longer throw our hands up and feign ignorance of the &#39;technology&#39; we are allowing our children to use. Most parents of kids under 15 are under 45. And all the statistics show that Irish adults under 45 already have Facebook,&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/LinkedIn" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">LinkedIn</a>&nbsp;or Twitter accounts. We can understand these things when we want to. It&#39;s time for us to get more involved in the services our kids our using.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			And Ask.fm? It needs to do three specific things. These will significantly enhance safety for children while allowing the site to continue offering a service.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			1. Make anonymity opt-in rather than opt-out.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			When you visit someone&#39;s profile and comment, the site defaults to anonymity, even if you are registered and logged in. To post non-anonymously, you have to tick a box. Ask.fm should change this.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			2. Allow people to block anonymous users.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			The site allows you to block abusers, but only if they&#39;re not posting anonymously. It could change this if it wanted to.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			3. Provide more transparency.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			So the site is hiring more people? Great. How many? What will their roles be (exactly)? How many abuse reports will they actually, genuinely see? This should be clear, even when the current news cycle fades.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			If the site does not start implementing such measures, it won&#39;t be long before creative legislators start to find ways of putting manners on it.</p>
		<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
			<a href="http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/adrian-weckler-these-solutions-offer-little-reassurance-to-parents-29511830.html">http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/adrian-weckler-these-solutions-offer-little-reassurance-to-parents-29511830.html</a></p>
	</div>
</div>
<p>
	&nbsp;</p>
