The Facebook Blog

There have been a lot of headlines about us recently in regards to online safety—especially the safety of minors on the site. We've been in ongoing talks with various agencies and people, and today we wanted to say unequivocally how seriously we take this issue.

In the past, we've talked about our report links and the contribution that all users make to keeping Facebook a trusted environment to share information. We've not talked in depth about our spam and abuse detection systems in order to make it more difficult for spammers, or worse, to game the system. We've also chosen not to talk about some of the protections for minors, again, to prevent people from gaming the system, making abusive or inappropriate actions even harder to detect. We've talked only in a limited way about the part our Customer Support team plays in keeping spam and abuse from playing a significant role in people's Facebook experience.

But right now, we want to make clear some of the things we are working on to prevent abuse from happening through Facebook. We are automatically moving complaints about nudity or pornography, and harassing or unwelcome contact to the top of our queue for Customer Support to address within 24 hours. We are limiting certain search functionality as it applies to minors. We are making sure that minors know explicitly when they are in contact with someone who is an adult.

As we continue to build out our proactive and reactive systems, we still believe that this is a partnership with you, our users. Practice smart internet safety; get to know our privacy options. Whether you're a minor or an adult, you should learn how to be smart online. No one wants anything bad to happen as a result of something on Facebook; we can all do our parts to make sure it doesn't.



Chris Kelly is Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer.