Facebook last night ruled out installing a 'panic button' on its homepage for users to report suspected sexual predators, despite having indicated its willingness to consider the issue to Home Secretary Alan Johnson.
Johnson said yesterday that introducing a button on the social networking site to report abuse to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) could "transform child protection" in the wake of the murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall from County Durham, who was killed by a rapist posing as a teenage boy on the site.
Johnson was speaking after a meeting with Facebook executives and child protection groups, in which it was argued that a button linking to CEOP would be a positive step for boosting child protection.
"We had a frank exchange of views in which I emphasised that including the CEOP abuse reporting button on [Facebook] has the potential to transform child protection and that the company should put this above all other considerations," Johnson said, adding that CEOP would be meeting with Facebook representatives in the US on 12 April to discuss the issue further.
Within hours, however, Richard Allen, director of policy for Facebook Europe, reaffirmed the site's commitment to beefing up child protection measures, but said in its experience introducing a panic button to the site's main interface wouldn't necessarily prove effective.
He confirmed plans to ensure UK users reporting complaints about online predators would immediately be able to get in touch with CEOP via a pop-up text box, but said "our experience of trying to put icons on the normal reporting flow is that it can reduce the number of reports."
Last October, registered sex offender Peter Chapman used a false identity to make contact with Hall and arrange a date with her. He was jailed earlier this month for at least 35 years after kidnapping, raping and murdering the teenager.
In the wake of the affair, CEOP head Jim Gamble called for the panic button to be on the front page of every Facebook profile page so "children are reassured and empowered, so are their parents, and offenders are deterred".
The button is already present on other social-networking sites, including Bebo, which is particularly popular with children.
CEOP says at present children make about 500 reports a month by clicking on the button across various sites. Of those, four a day are claimed to be from a child in immediate danger. In January, however, it claimed that about 75 per cent of all reports it received were about incidents on Facebook.
"Facebook is a great environment, they are experts on advertising and engaging with young people in those areas where you can get click-through," it said at the time. "But they're not experts on child protection."
