6-11-2010 New York:
New York’s attorney general Andrew Cuomo accused the social networking site Tagged.com on Thursday of not responding to user reports of child pornography and sexual solicitation of minors, which has allowed the popular site to become a place where sexual predators can exploit children.
Cuomo sent a letter to the site, which claims 5 million users. The letter announces his intent to sue the site for violating trade laws by not adhering to its promises to keep the site safe.
With the pending suit, Tagged.com becomes the latest social network to be accused of not adequately policing their sites for sexual predators and inappropriate images. In its heyday, MySpace claimed it was too technically difficult to keep offenders off its site, a claim belied by Wired.com’s Kevin Poulsen, who wrote a computer script that identified 744 registered sex offenders’ MySpace accounts, leading to the arrest and conviction in New York state of a known sex offender Andrew Lubrano.
Its so easy to accuse, but I cannot remember if there is a law requiring these sites to police themselves for "sexual predators." Are they to ignore all other forms of criminality? It appears this AG is fixated on sexual crimes, hopefully he puts as much effort into catching other types of criminals.
The attorney general had employees create accounts on Tagged and report child-porn images. Some of what they found included a bestiality-themed image involving a girl who looks younger than 10 and a picture of an adult performing oral sex on a girl younger than 10, according to the letter.
Of the 29 user profiles that included abusive sexual images of children, 18 still have the content online, the AG said. That includes the bestiality and oral sex images that were reported to Tagged.com on May 27, according to the AG.
Additionally, the AG reported to Tagged a user with the screen name “criminal sex offender,” who admitted to being a convicted sexual predator. His profile remains online, the AG said.
According to the letterannouncing the intent to sue (.pdf) in five days:
The Office of the Attorney General has found that (i) child pornography is shockingly common on Tagged.com; (ii) graphic pornography and obscene content is readily available to and shared with and between underage users; (iii) adult users target underage users to engage in sexually explicit dialogues; and (iv) Tagged’s responsiveness to user and parental reports and complaints about illegal or inappropriate content and contact is at best haphazard and inconsistent and at worst non-existent.
Because of Tagged’s failure to respond appropriately to user reports of child pornography and other inappropriate sexual content, such content remains on Tagged.com and is available to harm children. In short, Tagged cannot make claims that it considers safety a top priority and that it will take action against illegal and inappropriate content and contact on Tagged.com when those claims are false and misleading, as OAG’s investigation has revealed.
“Despite the safety claims listed on its very own website, Tagged.com repeatedly looks the other way when sexually explicit material is sent to its underage users,” Cuomo said in his press release.
For its part, Tagged.com says it is working to solve the problem.
“We are working closely and cooperatively with Attorney General Coumo’s office and hope to resolve this quickly in the best interest of our members’ safety,” said Louis Willacy, the company’s general counsel, in an e-mail statement. “At Tagged, we strive constantly to improve our program to keep illegal content out and prevent unlawful contact between adults and minors on our site. The safety of our members is a top priority.”
AG investigators made more than 100 reports about 80 users for various misdeeds, 51 of whom still have active accounts, according to the AG. ..Source..
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