A 14-year-old girl from Northern Ireland is suing Facebook after a naked photo was published on a “shame” page and repeatedly reposted.
At a hearing in Belfast’s High Court, the girl’s attorney said that Facebook should have made blocking the image from being republished a “red-line” issue, the BBC reported on Thursday.
Her barrister:
A naked [14-year-old’s] picture was being put on a shame page.
If [Facebook] had blocked it, all this subsequent publication of her naked image would not have taken place.
Her lawyers claim that the picture was extorted from her and published over and over again online as a form of revenge.
Facebook has claimed that it took the photo down as soon as it was notified about it.
The girl, who can’t be identified, is seeking unspecified damages for misuse of private information, negligence and breach of the Data Protection Act.
The judge reserved his decision on an application to have the case halted, The BBC reports. That means that he’s reserving judgment until he can research the issues and write a judgment that summarizes the parties’ arguments and his research results.
It’s shocking to think of a 14-year-old being subjected to sextortion, but kids even younger — as young as 11 — have been victims of revenge porn.
As far as keeping your kids safe when they’re online goes, there are tools that can help us do it. These include parental controls that let you set your children’s privacy settings, control whether they can install new apps, enforce ratings restrictions on what they can buy on iTunes, or that can even limit what type of app they can use.
We’ve got more tips to keep your kids safe online here.
And if you’re not even sure what your kids are up to online, this could help.
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How the hell did that photo get created in the first place? Not victim shaming here but seriously, nudes of a 14 year old?
You can’t blame Facebook here and I hope they don’t get punished for something that’s not their fault in the first place. Everyone with a half-functioning brain knows that whatever you post online stays online forever. Does nobody tell that anymore to kids?
The stupidity is astounding.
Lisa Vaas
The photo was gotten via extortion. You can’t hold children under the age of consent responsible for being victimized by cretins. Hopefully children are savvier now than when this took place—the photos were posted in 2014 and 2016—but this focus on the victim is misplaced, IMHO. Where’s the rage against then extortionist who preyed on a child?
Bill Walters
LOL! If this 14 year old posted this picture, then it will be online forever. Sucker!
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Shouldn’t it be distribution of child pornography? Even if she took picture that picture herself it doesn’t make it any more legal.
Lisa Vaas
She didn’t post it. The extortionist did. And yes, that makes it distribution of child abuse imagery. The case against the alleged perpetrator is still pending as of 01/2018.
Scott Ramsay
I’m very confused. What did she expect Facebook to do? Is Facebook supposed to keep a copy of the image on there servers and check every image that gets uploaded against it to see if it’s the same image re-uploaded or are they supposed to delete all copies of the image from there servers?
Lisa Vaas
Yes, that’s exactly what Facebook should have done—at least, to keep a copy of a hash of the photo, if not the photo itself. That’s what her lawyers argued (successfully: as of 1/9/18, this case was settled out of court, with Facebook paying). There’s technology out there that law enforcement has been using for years to put a hash onto known child abuse images so they can be automatically recognized. It’s called PhotoDNA. Facebook in Nov. 2017 actually began to suggest that people mail in their nude photos so they could be registered and prevented from being posted. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/06/facebook-upload-your-nudes-to-stop-revenge-porn/