Facebook apologized on Monday for a survey it sent to some users a day earlier asking if it was acceptable for an adult man to ask a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures on its service.
The survey asked users to indicate what would be appropriate “in an ideal world” if they were the ones to set Facebook’s policies. Options ranged from “this content should not be allowed, and no one should be able to see it” to “this content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it,” according to The Guardian.
In a follow-up question, Facebook asked who should set rules for this type of behavior including by user through votes or exclusively by Facebook. At no point did it suggest law enforcement or child protective services should be part of the equation.
In an exchange on Twitter about the issue, Facebook vice president of product Guy Rosen said: “We run surveys to understand how the community thinks about how we set policies. But this kind of activity is and will always be completely unacceptable on FB. We regularly work with authorities if identified. It shouldn’t have been part of this survey. That was a mistake.”
https://twitter.com/guyro/status/970382612714856448
Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by Fortune.
A Facebook representative told The Guardian that it has prohibited such pictures from being shared on the platform since its earliest days and that it it has no intention of changing that policy. The representative also said it works regularly with police when such incidents occur to bring offenders to justice.
