Facebook launches safety page, closes down major app

Facebook has launched a user safety page whose ‘fans' will be kept up-to-date with news on how to keep themselves safe when using Facebook.

Joe Sullivan, Facebook's chief security officer, said that the safety page is where it will post ‘dynamic content to complement the resources in the expanded Safety Center that we introduced in April'.

He said: “The safety page will highlight new initiatives to keep people on Facebook safe, valuable educational materials from internet safety experts including the members of our safety advisory board and relevant news coverage. The safety page is modelled after our popular security page, which discusses best practices for maintaining data security and has grown to over 2.2 million fans.”

Blogger Nick O'Neill, writing on the allfacebook.com website, said: “So far the page contains links to some of Facebook's other safety initiatives - such as the Facebook Safety Advisory Board - and third party information such as a Connect Safely blog post on suicide prevention on Facebook. At present, the page is also suffering from quite a bit of comment spam, promoting unrelated content such as music pages.”

Facebook has also taken steps to close down the ‘Create Your Quiz' application, the second largest on the social networking site. Creators Pencake have been called "blatant spammers" after the Chinese press were given details of the application.

Facebook told O'Neill: “We recently disabled applications created by the developer of ‘Create Your Quiz' for violating Facebook platform policies. We enforce these policies regularly and will continue to take appropriate action against applications we find do not provide a trustworthy experience for users.”

O'Neill said: “It's not surprising to see the developers gone, however that instantly provided a large market for other quiz applications, like Quiz Planet and Quiz Monster, both of which have surged up the charts in recent weeks. That surge may partially be due to the fact that Facebook has switched reporting so that all child applications show up in their parent applications.

“It's also simply because quiz applications are extremely popular on Facebook. Whether or not we'll see the ‘Create Your Quiz' application return again is unknown. Perhaps Pencake will simply be remembered as one of the great spammers of the Facebook platform.”

See original article on scmagazineus.com