Facebook has to act over fake profiles

FACEBOOK must place a very low value on our intelligence if it thinks we believe it when it says users must register for the social media site under their own names.

Speaking to TDs and senators yesterday at a committee hearing on Cyber Security for Children and Young Adults, the company’s content policy spokesman Siobhán Cummiskey insisted that Facebook’s ‘authentic identity’ policy ensured users could use only their real names. This, she added, meant that users were ‘much more careful and much more responsible’ for what they said.

This, of course, is absolute piffle to anyone who uses Facebook regularly. Not only do adults receive friend requests daily from profiles with no friends at all, we need only look to a recent high-profile case to see how easily a fake ID can be used in an attempt to entice the underage into sexual activity.

RTÉ producer Kieran Creaven was not using his real name when he thought he was communicating with a 13-year-old girl in Leeds, but instead was communicating under a fake identity, Jimmi Cee. By the same token, the girl’s profile also was fake, created by a vigilante group that confronts men when they show up to meet the ‘child’ they believed they were talking to.

There have also been countless stories of so-called ‘catfishing’, with fake Facebook profiles created either to stalk or harass others, or to attempt to defraud, or to coerce into sexual activity.

Facebook justifiably was castigated by the Oireachtas committee for attempting to make light of this serious flaw in its model. In reality, there is no way of knowing for sure if a user is acting in good faith, which is why you should always accept friend requests only from people you actually know in real life.

We might wish for people to use their real names, but there is no way of knowing for sure – and that is why we must also protect those, especially the young, who might be harmed by predators with unsavoury motives.