Face Police

Facebook has apparently implemented a "Panic Button" in the UK that "allows youngsters to report suspicious behaviour to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and Facebook."

I can't help thinking this is a bad idea.

Don't get me wrong. I really don't like the idea of kids being cyberbullied or stalked or in any way endangered in any online forum. And yes, I see lots of potential for all of these via Facebook and other online forums.

But I don't think this Panic Button will ever be terribly useful, and I do think it will cause more harm than good.

Think about it. Do we really want a bunch of 13-18 year olds hitting that button unsupervised, possibly at whim? CEOP, as far as I can tell, is a branch of UK law enforcement. Would you really want law enforcement getting involved with every report a teenager cared to dream up? And can you imagine how much work it would be for law enforcement to sort out all those reports? And who gets blamed when law enforcement can't keep up with it all, and some teenager gets killed anyway? And what happens to the kid who gets reported by some other kid as a prank? Sure it will get sorted out, but how long will it take for that kid to get his life back?

I don't have the answer to handling cyberstalking, but I'm pretty sure this isn't it.