Girl aged 14 wins Facebook payout over revenge porn
FACEBOOK has paid compensation to a 14-year-old girl in a landmark legal action after naked photographs of her were posted online.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the girl, from Northern Ireland, launched High Court proceedings after her photo was allegedly posted on a so-called shame page on Facebook several times between November 2014 and January 2016.
Following the alleged case of ‘revenge porn’, the victim sought damages from the social media giant for the misuse of private information, negligence and breach of the Data Protection Act.
On Tuesday, representatives for the victim and Facebook agreed to a confidential outof-court settlement, potentially opening the floodgates to thousands of similar cases.
Lawyer Pearse MacDermott, representing the girl, said: ‘Had these images been put in a newspaper or on the TV there would be serious repercussions and those same repercussions should also apply to whatever platform is used in the social media world.
‘The case moves the goal posts in the sense that Facebook always said it was up to the individual user to be responsible, not them.
‘It now puts the onus on the provider to look at how they respond to indecent, abusive and other such images put on their platform. Whenever an image is put up that is clearly objectionable they should be able to stop that ever going up again. They should use the technology they have to be a responsible provider and remove the offensive post.’
It comes days after the Children’s Commissioner warned parents should think twice before allowing their children to use ‘addictive’ social media. Anne Longfield published a major report warning youngsters are becoming dependent on social media for their sense of self-worth.
She said social media firms were exposing children to major emotional risks, with some starting secondary school ill-equipped to cope with the avalanche of pressure they faced online.
Facebook bans explicit images, and revenge porn can result in a prison sentence of up to two years in the UK. But it is still a major problem for the social network.
Figures leaked last year showed Facebook was flooded with 54,000 suspected cases of revenge porn and ‘sextortion’ in one month.
Moderators told bosses last January about 51,300 potential cases of revenge porn, which the firm defines as attempts to use intimate imagery to shame, humiliate or gain revenge. They also flagged up 2,450 possible cases of sextortion – classed as attempts to use the images to extort money or obtain more pictures.
More than 14,000 accounts were disabled over the allegations, with 33 of the reviewed cases involving children. Since then, Facebook has taken steps to stop revenge porn images being posted repeatedly and is trialling a scheme in Australia where worried users can send the images to the company themselves so it can prevent their upload in future.
Last month a former Facebook boss claimed the social network’s ‘dopamine-driven feedback loops’ were ‘ripping apart the social fabric’. Its ex-president, Sean Parker, said: ‘God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.’
Yesterday, Mr MacDermott, from McCann and McCann Solicitors, the case had had a ‘detrimental effect’ on the victim’s mental health. He suggested social media sites should take ‘moral and social responsibility’.
‘I think there is a need to look at how social media organisations operate their systems and how they operate the material that comes onto their site,’ he said.