Social Flirting App Leads to Child Rapes
That's a headline I wish were nothing more than attention-grabbing linkbait.Ever since location-based apps have been the Next Big Thing, people have been decrying the danger aspect to them. Check in on Foursquare and post that on Twitter? People will rob your house. Use Highlight? A rapist will stalk you.Not to mention the creepy factor of apps such as Girls Around Me, which sought to tell dudes what venue near them has the most ladies, so they can increase their chance of getting lucky. (That one was voluntarily pulled after an outcry.)But the Bits column on NYTimes.com yesterday evening had quite discomfiting piece on a "social flirting" app, Skout. It seems that three children — two girls aged 15 and 12 and a 13-year-old boy — were befriended by adults using the app's "teen" version and raped. Quick background: The app started out just for adults, but they found so many underage users on their service that they created a separate area for teens that was supposed to have strict safeguards to keep them from harm.We've long talked and read about the danger of chat rooms for our children - be careful who you make friends with, don't meet these strangers in person or send them nude photos of yourselves. Same should be said of the app world. In the boy's case, he sent nude photos of himself to someone he thought was a 16-year-old. The app's filters should have caught those, according to the Times article, but they didn't.I'm not going to pretend I know how the app could have completely prevented these acts from happening. There are bad adults who will always try to take advantage of children. Perhaps, ironically, having the separate area for teens made it easier for the predators to track their prey. I do believe the team at Skout had the best of intentions in creating that walled garden and had hoped to keep children safe that way. Should the children's parents have been more vigilant about what their children were doing online? Sure, but we all know kids will do things we don't know about; most of us did the same when we were that age.Once alerted to the rapes, Skout took the teen community offline and has been cooperating with police. But beyond that, their public response has been severely wanting. I went to their Twitter stream (@Singles) to see what they were saying. There were many responses from Skout to users wondering why the service was down, and they linked to a blog post written by founder and CEO Christian Wiklund that went up yesterday.It starts:
Today Skout has decided to temporarily suspend access to our teen community. This is not a decision we made lightly, so let me explain in my own words why we chose this path.
OK. But then I continue to read. And read. And read. Not until the fourth paragraph do they even begin to explain why they're shutting it down:
However, it’s become clear to us that these measures aren’t enough. In recent weeks, we’ve learned of several incidents involving a few bad actors trying to take advantage of some of our younger members.
That's it. Wiklund goes on for a couple paragraphs more about how the safety of Skout's users is Priority No. 1, blah, blah, blah.But three rapes of children — one of whom isn't even a teenager yet! — are hardly "a few bad actors trying to take advantage."They owe it to their users — teen and adult alike — to explain what happened. To tell the truth.Even in the comments, where dozens of young users are asking why it was shut down with no notice, the one person commenting who seems to be working for Skout, someone named Chelsea, is offering virtually no information. No explanation. Just that all their messages and contacts will still be there when the service comes back up, and this:
the changes and improvements we’re making are in the interest of all Skout users. We do remove accounts which display inappropriate or suspicious behavior, but these changes will make Skout better for everyone at once. The closure is only temporary.
Their users are excoriating them, are angry about having no warning. At least some of the users would probably understand if they were told the truth. They might even be scared enough to talk to their parents about it.Skout should be out in front of this, telling their users what happened and explaining that until they find a way to ensure this doesn't happen again, they're not going to reopen the app. For anyone.
Photo by Mihai Tamasila via stock.xchng