Facebook criticised over handling of reports of child exploitation content
&quot;Facebook&#x27;s rules forbid convicted sex offenders from having accounts.<p>But the BBC found five convicted paedophiles with profiles, and reported them to Facebook via its own system. None of them were taken down.&quot;<p>This tidbit in the article didn&#x27;t so much surprise me exactly as pop out as something that seems unreasonable upon consideration even if it looks like a good idea on its face.<p>Key points for me regarding this is that recidivism rates are greatly affected by successful integration back into the community after serving time, and sex offenders have the most difficulty integrating already.  While there&#x27;s certainly reasonable concerns around the risk of these people accessing Facebook, by the admission of the company itself it&#x27;s a new type of influential global community.  By banning sex offenders outright they&#x27;re being othered in a way which is a significant impediment to being reintegrated into society.<p>That aside, at least in the US, you can end up a sex offender for life for things as innocuous as stopping on the side of a long stretch of highway to empty your bladder.  There&#x27;s also no unified worldwide or national database of sex offenders to check against, nor are their uniform standards between states and nations on what qualifies.  This means it&#x27;s both difficult for Facebook to enforce this rule at all and practically impossible to do so in a way which would only apply to people convicted of offenses we can agree qualify (molestation, rape, sexual assault).<p>I find it extremely odd that Facebook would willingly put itself in the position to police accounts this way and that there&#x27;d be public support for the idea of banning people outright without any basis in their activity on Facebook.