Facebook is eager to babysit your teenage kids | canada.com

At least one employee at Facebook’s Canadian headquarters knows exactly how to make a visiting journalist jump nervously: Just tell them they are not allowed to take any pictures of the office.

While the staffer was quick to tell the snapper that they were just kidding, most reporters invited up to the 14th floor of the Yonge Eglinton Centre in midtown Toronto had reason to presume that the social media monolith actually had such a strict policy. The idea follows nicely with the Silicon Valley template of revealing as little about itself as it can get away with, while wrangling all the information it can from users.

So, the company provided media with a unique opportunity on Wednesday, which consisted of a lunch hour forum with its Bay Area-based manager of privacy and safety, Nicky Jackson Colaco.

The focus of the discussion was not how the grown-ups in the room navigate the ever-changing settings, rather what the company has done to develop safer experiences for the eternally lucrative adolescent demographic, presumably so that they stick around Facebook for the rest of their lives.

Coincidentally or not, the invitation came immediately after what was perhaps the worst publicity Facebook has ever received in Canada, after the discovery that photos of Rehtaeh Parsons — the Nova Scotia high schooler who committed suicide in April after allegedly being sexually assaulted and bullied — were used to draw attention to sidebar advertisements for a sketchy dating website.

While all apologies came swiftly, Facebook was forced to explain that its increasingly sophisticated methods of creating customized advertising out of personal preferences was not to blame, even though the incident did not reflect too well on the quality of companies that have paid for placement.

The obvious — if generally unspoken — retort from Facebook is that feeding its system more information about yourself only serves to provide the company with more data that it uses to serve you more of the sponsored links you are genuinely inclined to click.

And how can an overprotective parent be so cruel as to deny their offspring a pipeline of personalized information?

Colaco’s job is entirely concerned with making Facebook seem like a socially responsible business. His stop in Toronto preceded a keynote at the Privacy & Access 20/20 Conference in Vancouver alongside other digital notables including Canada’s Privacy Commission Jennifer Stoddart.

But the company does pay particular attention to protecting users between the official minimum age of 13 and technical adulthood at 18 — an age range that would now barely remember a Facebook-free civilization — which was the message it clearly wants to spread in more traditional Canadian media.

Colaco pointed to the corporate decision to double down on its real-name policy for all Facebook users, which is seen as the best way to optimize safety, along with the technology to flag a growing number who are not only inventing their identity, but also friending a suspicious pattern of people.

Grown men who try to connect with multiple teen girls would raise a red flag, for example, although a moderator would not take action if it was noticed that the old guy is a coach at their school.

The issue of how judgement calls play into the process of keeping Facebook safe was a main point of curiosity during the discussion. Generally, given its volume of users, the social network has been motivated to develop every tool it can think of to avoid having to be the virtual mediator of teen drama while also protecting those same teens from legitimate danger.

Younger people who click on one of its reporting tools are gently encouraged to take one of several steps to directly defuse what they consider to be bullying, even if it requires getting a third-party involved by Facebook message or email. The measures are estimated to result in 80 per cent of the bullying scenarios not being escalated to the point of corporate intervention.

Should those measures not result in the deletion of a status update or picture that is seen as upsetting, Colaco explained that a report to the mothership will invariably be considered without judgement, as the company has no reason to get into deeper deliberation. Besides, how could that be worth their time?

The most intriguing part of the presentation, however, was the explanation of how Facebook reaches out to younger users according to their age group.

A different tone of language is used to effectively explain the options to those in Grades 7-8 compared to Grades 9-10  compared to Grades 11-12. It’s the kind of thing psychologists go to great lengths to figure out, which reflects how far the social media industry has come from simply needing to employ people who can write computer code.

But the premise of tailoring safety information to specific ages is also predicated upon the kind of disclosure that advertisers desire.

Nonetheless, an air of intimidation will remain as long as the details of what exactly Facebook is doing with all this personal information remains shrouded in secrecy to most.

Joking with jumpy journalists about not being able to take pictures of its Canadian headquarters, hidden from public view 14 floors above ground, may just be a way of testing whether the mystique has sustained.

Source: http://o.canada.com/technology/facebook-canada-teenage-babysitter/
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