Disgrace-space.

I thought that with the undeniable triumph of Facebook as social networking site of choice for almost everyone, with the exception perhaps of bands who favour MurdochSpace and various media luvvies and others who like Twitter that the Sun had put a lid on its Facebook-bashing. They couldn't apparently resist the temptation to splash today though with "DISGRACEBOOK", because Facebook isn't vetting every single profile on the site:

Andrea, 39, said: "It is time somebody introduced controls which stop people putting up false information. The people who run Facebook have a responsibility."

Well no, they don't. They provide a service. If you somehow think you can stop people putting up "false information" without infringing the privacy of everyone, you haven't thought it through clearly. The Sun for its part, without mentioning MySpace (prop. R Murdoch), drops hardly the most subtle of hints with the bringing up of the Internet Watch Foundation:

Facebook and Twitter are the only major social networking sites which are not members of the Internet Watch Foundation.

The paper continues the argument in the leader:

As Ashleigh's devastated mother Andrea tells The Sun today, Facebook MUST now face up to its responsibilities and do more to stop perverts.

It is wrong to think nothing can be done about manipulative monsters who use networking sites to stalk victims.

There IS an organisation dedicated to making the web safer: the respected Internet Watch Foundation.

Facebook bosses have no excuse for not joining forces with it. Other similar sites belong.

The Foundation works with child protection agencies to track down internet perverts before it is too late.

The Sun urges Facebook chiefs to read Andrea's heartbreaking words.

And then, for Ashleigh's sake, join up.

Err, except the Foundation doesn't. The IWF is the body which blocks child pornography, criminally obscene content ("extreme pornography") and material considered to incite racial hatred. It might report material posted by someone to the police, as it did in the case of Darryn Walker, and it works with child protection agencies, but it doesn't "track down internet perverts", unless it is going well beyond its remit. The IWF couldn't have done anything to prevent the murder of Andrea, and it wouldn't be the slightest surprise if her murderer had also in the past used other social networking sites in exactly the same way. Bebo and News International as a whole are members of the IWF, but all membership brings is that rather than simply blocking material through "Cleanfeed", the IWF issues them with takedown notices. That the IWF is not "respected" in all quarters, is also one good reason to not sign up with it: it's a completely unaccountable organisation which acts a censor when it does not have legal jurisdiction to decide what is illegal and what isn't; it just decides what is and isn't according to its own legal advice, which is not the same thing.

That then is a damning front page and damning editorial aimed at a commercial rival which is based on the idea you can police the internet when you can't and on the idea that the IWF can when it doesn't. One wonders if Facebook will play dead in the same way as the BBC when attacked by the mighty Murdoch press. Oh, and I almost forgot, back in 2007 it was found that 29,000 sex offenders in America had profiles on MySpace. The Sun strangely didn't have anything to say about it, despite the rest of the press thinking it was important enough to.