19 Aug 2013

‘We want users to have fun,’ say Ask.fm in safety pledge

Controversial question-and-answer website Ask.fm says it will introduces new safety measures in a bid to tackle cyberbulling.

The site came under scrutiny after the death of teenager Hannah Smith. The 14-year-old endured months of bullying on the site before being found hanged in her bedroom.

Following her death, campaigners called for Ask.fm to be closed down, but its co-founders Ilja and Mark Terebi have remained defiant.

On Monday Ask.fm said it would be introducing new safety features after carrying out an audit of the site.

Safety Officer

Changes include hiring a safety officer, creating a more prominent “report button”, and more staff hired to work as moderators.

In a statement, Ask.fm’s management said: “We want our users to be able to have fun, share information, make friends and express themselves freely.

“We also want them – particularly our younger users – to be able to do this in a safe environment”.

The report button itself will be more prominent, the site said, and “bullying/harassment” will be introduced as a category alongside the existing categories of “spam or scam”, “hate speech”, “violence” and “pornographic content”.

An option allowing users to opt out of receiving anonymous questions will be more prominent.

Read more: Ask.fm website promise review after deadly bullying

Ask.fm added: “In the light of recent events highlighting the impact online bullying and harassment can have on young people, we engaged professional advisers to conduct a full and independent audit of our site and its safety features.

“This audit has now been completed. Based on the findings and the recommendations that were made, we can today announce our commitment to making changes to Ask.fm’s existing policies in three core areas: reporting and moderation, registration, and corporate visibility.”

Amendments to the report button will be in place by September, while new members of the moderation team will be in place by January.

The button allowing users to opt out of receiving anonymous questions will be more prominent and accessible by October this year, the statement added.

Ask.fm website for parents

In a bid to encourage people to register to use the site, unregistered users will not be able to access the same amount of features on the site as registered users.

Efforts to encourage people to register, will mean the site will be able to record the email and IP addresses of users and deal better with reports, it said.

Founders of the site also plan to create a separate website, live in spring 2014, from its social network which will provide extra information for parents and others.

We want our users to be able to have fun, share information and make friends. Ask.fm

Children’s charity Action for Children welcomed the move on Monday but said that “young people should also have the ability to block other users if they need to.”

Specsavers, Vodafone, Laura Ashley, EDF Energy and charity Save the Children pulled adverts from the site, following the death of the teenager.

On Monday Hanna’s father told ITV Daybreak that he had banned her from using the site but she had carried on in secret.

He said: “I had already told Hannah to stay off Ask.fm because the school actually sent a text out saying ‘Keep your kids off Ask.fm’.

“I told her to stay off it, but with Ask.fm it’s very difficult to find it on the computer anyway.”

Family and friends of Hannah, from Lutterworth in Leicestershire, said a final goodbye to the teenager at her funeral on August 16.

Read more: Spotlight on Ask.fm after teen suicide

Her sister Jo, who discovered Hannah’s body on August 2, said she herself had stopped using the website after being called “horrible things” just months before her sister’s death.

“I used it about four months ago and got called a slag and horrible things, so I stopped using it,” she said.

“I didn’t really get very nice questions – there were no nice questions.”

She added that Hannah had also kept her use of the site a secret from her big sister, setting up another Facebook account which she used as another way of accessing Ask.fm.

“She used a different Facebook (account) to what we could see – we couldn’t see that one so we never knew,” said Jo.

Read more: Close down Ask.fm, says suicide daughters' mother