Should the ask.fm website be shut down?

[Notsoyummymummy1]

As the ask.fm website is linked to four teen suicides, surely it should be closed down. Half of the site's 65m users worldwide are teenagers and realistically parents can't be expected to know everything their children get up to. Why is this government so slow to regulate the Internet?

I dont want to sound flippant but why do the teenagers just leave the website if they are receiving abuse through it?

I understand cyber bullying where they constantly bombard you with texts, facebook posts, email through the x box etc can be very hard to get away from but if its anonymous posts on one website why keep logging on to read them? Why not just leave?

I agree youbethemummylion - it baffles me why people put themselves in these situations, I mean why do celebrities make themselves accessible to anyone by going on Twitter - everyone knows the dangers of trolls etc. I think teenagers are a case apart though - online communities factor in a much bigger way in their lives than it ever did when we were young and teenagers will have more of a compulsion to find out what people are saying about them because they are so much more vulnerable than adults are. I just think that the government need to do more to protect young people - you wouldn't be allowed to do it in the street so why can you do it online?

Great points LoremIpsum you're absolutely right that suicide is in an individual choice and lots of things contribute to that choice. Everyone around that teenager is going to feel guilty and want to apportion blame elsewhere. Perhaps suicidal teenagers feed off these sites in an awful way to justify how they feel. Having said that, even if no-one had killed themselves, these sites attract vulnerable teenagers and the content needs to be regulated. 50 moderators for millions of people is just not adequate.

Notsoyummymummy1

"I just think that people who say it's all down to the parents are being unrealistic."

If this is happening to minors in your house then who else is responsible?

Parents are the ones who are letting their children have unrestricted access to the internet and its parents who are allowing them to do it unsupervised.

you can get filters for pcs, laptops, Macs and apps for smart phones, there are ways and means of protecting your children.

Yes of course but we don't live in an ideal world - not all parents, particularly working parents are able to monitor what their older children do in and out of the home 24/7 and some wouldn't have a clue how to set these things up. Also as we know there are parents who won't even bother to try and the government does have some responsibility to offer what help and protection it can, in my opinion.

Its not about living in an ideal world, the government can't shutdown Ask.fm because its not hosted in this country.

They can try and stop people from accessing it but children will get around it.

You as a parent can put programs on your pc that will prevent access, that will restrict the length of time that they can be on the internet, You as a parent can refuse to buy them the newest (or even not so new) smart phone.

As for "some wouldn't have a clue how to set these things up" then they should learn how to set them up. As for parent that won't bother they won't care when their children get around the blocks that the government put in place and will still show your children undesirable stuff.

DS1's school has strongly urged parents to ensure their DC do not use askfm. In a "This is what we expect parents to do" kind of way.

I know DS doesn't, but should he want to, it would be difficult for me to monitor exactly what he is doing on-line....on i=his ipod, on his friends mobile, etc. Yes, I can (and do) do spot checks, but he set up a FB account when he was 12 from his DSi.

Educating kids is the way forward, IMO.

The settings on my PC (which I'm using now) are incredibly secure.

The setting on the devise my 14yo is using at his freinds house right now....well what do I know? I now his friends parents are nice, but how tech savvy they are, I have no idea.

LynetteScavo

You could ask them

Yes, I can, and have asked parents.

It wouild get a bit when DS goes round to a friends house, and I send a text to the mother saying "Thanks for having him, I will collect at 5pm - Oh, and by the way what are the settings on all your internet devises, including your 18yo DSs?) I will have already stated no COD is to be played, but at the end of the day I have to trust DS to make sensible choices. If he is offered alcohol he needs to know to refuse. I don't not let him go to someones house because they have alcohol in the fridge.

BoneyBackJefferson - I totally agree with you that parents should do more but the reality is that not enough of them will so rather than just shrug our shoulders and say oh well it's the parents' fault, we should be pushing for Internet regulation. Even if parents do manage to control everything their child does at home - they can't affect what they are exposed to out of the home and that includes drink and drugs too - we have laws about those but not about the Internet. What is the difference between someone who stands in the street preaching hate and someone who tries to incite someone into suicide? They are both equally wrong and we need regulations to protect the vulnerable - sites like these must face being shut down or stopped from being available in the UK if they do not moderate their users adequately.

Notsoyummymummy1

How do you regulate the internet?
A student where I work was on piratebay within 20 minutes of the site being regulated by his parents ISP.

School pupils were around the schools net blocks and on Youtube in my first class of the year (last year). Its the same with the games websites they not only get around the school blocks but the LEA blocks as well. A system set up by the government will not work there are many threads that explain this)

In the end the government cannot shutdown sites that are situated outside of it own country and if they did it would just move countries and providers.

I do agree that something needs to be done about these sites but as to what should or could be done is the problem.

No, that's ridiculous. It's like saying that Mumsnet should be banned because somebody got trolled on here.

Ridiculous. Educate your children about the internet and then there would be no need for 'internet regulation'. (Which is just as ridiculous and corrupt as it not existing at all.)

I do understand the Internet doesn't "belong" to the government, it was created for the people who use it. I know that with any new form of communication, it should be expected that there are people who would abuse it. I know the Internet is so broad a medium, that not only would it be nearly impossible to regulate, with so many different countries and cultures having to agree on the same thing. I can't say I fully trust the government either to decide what is ok and what isn't and not be susceptible to powerful influences. All I know is that the current free for all in the Internet is causing untold damage to our young people and even if removing sites is not an achievable goal, surely we can at least ensure that all British chat forums are legally obliged to have a set ratio of moderators to users so that the site can be properly monitored, to have an emergency button people can click to automatically alert moderators of inappropriate or offensive comments, for the site to be fined if they don't automatically remove users who are abusive, to have age limits on sites with users having to give a passport or driving licence number to register with prosecutions for those who give false information, to make trolling a criminal offence etc etc.

I had never heard of ask.fm until this incident. I bet their website has become more popular as a result, even if advertisers are pulling out.

Teen female suicides have stayed roughly the same since 2006, when all the social media systems became popular so I suspect they are not the problem, they are merely allowing behaviour that already went on to happen in a new way.

"Emergency" buttons on forums will be the most abused tool you could add. They will be used by people wishing to suppress legitimate debate, people losing arguments and will become the new anonymous weapon of choice of bullies.

The Internet doesn't hurt people, people hurt people.

Surely the moderators could tell the difference between a debate and abuse?!!!

You would think so.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Tech/

So it turns out she sent 98% of the messages herself. Should people really be calling for a kneejerk reaction and trying to ban websites before the whole story comes out?

Total farce. Especially as the story seems to have gone quiet now this news came out.

Notsoyummymummy1

I do understand the Internet doesn't "belong" to the government, it was created for the people who use it. I know that with any new form of communication, it should be expected that there are people who would abuse it. I know the Internet is so broad a medium, that not only would it be nearly impossible to regulate, with so many different countries and cultures having to agree on the same thing. I can't say I fully trust the government either to decide what is ok and what isn't and not be susceptible to powerful influences.

And yet every post you've made on the subject demands the intervention of people you don't trust on to a medium you don't understand.

All I know is that the current free for all in the Internet is causing untold damage to our young people

You don't "know" that at all. You think it and you've no evidence to prove it.

and even if removing sites is not an achievable goal, surely we can at least ensure that all British chat forums are legally obliged to have a set ratio of moderators to users so that the site can be properly monitored, to have an emergency button people can click to automatically alert moderators of inappropriate or offensive comments, for the site to be fined if they don't automatically remove users who are abusive, to have age limits on sites with users having to give a passport or driving licence number to register with prosecutions for those who give false information, to make trolling a criminal offence etc etc.

What's a "British" chat forum? Is it one hosted on servers in the UK. Because all that people need to do is move their hosting to the US. How're you going to block that?

It's the responsibility of parents to make sure their children have enough sense to avoid becoming embroiled in this kind of site and to educate themselves on how to block it in their own homes, no matter how long it takes, or how busy they are, or how alien and complicated the technology seems to them.

They did it for their children when they were babies and toddlers and they still need them to be on the ball. Parents need to get off their butts and stop making whiny excuses and just do it.

They also need to look at the sort of family life they provide. If they are too busy or too far removed from their children's lives to make understanding their children's devices then they are probably also too removed emotionally from their children's lives and are not spending enough time together, which is the best antidote to sites like this.

Stop whining.

Start parenting.

If a crime is committed our laws could cope I suspect. But then gotta be on UK soil and this is the Internet. How do u know where I am now?

ask.fm will not do a thing unless their advertising is withdrawn. I did see soemwhere they were unconcerned as they they felt the issues were only appropriate to the UK.

They are a business.

We parents need to do something. And I don't know what that something is as my ds is still wee but I still do worry.