By Tamara Littleton

This time last year, 17 web firms and social networks (including the ‘big four’: YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo) signed an agreement in Luxembourg to protect under-18s using their sites. This was done through a number of practical steps including: implementing ‘report abuse’ buttons; registering online profiles of under 18s as ‘private’ by default (and not searchable via the website or search engines); making privacy options simple to change; and taking steps to prevent under-age users from accessing the network.

Measures in the UK include the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS)’s strategy recommendations (out later this year), which will recommend that all social networks install a panic button to report inappropriate behaviour. Other initiatives include the education of children on the potential dangers of the internet.

This issue has been thrown into sharp focus this month, with the conviction in Italy of three Google executives after they allegedly failed to remove a video of an autistic boy being bullied after it had been reported to them as inappropriate. Although the conviction was actually made on grounds of privacy (and would probably not have resulted in conviction in the UK) the repercussions will be widely felt by anyone getting involved in social media. With more brands incorporating social networks into their social media and advertising strategies, the issue of protecting consumers from bullying or abuse has never been more important. Safety of users is of course paramount, but what must also be considered is the impact on a brand’s reputation if it failed to take action against abusive or inappropriate content.

In our experience, there is a common misconception by brands that social networks are inherently safe places for them (and their users) to be. That just isn’t the case.

It’s true that each network has a feedback mechanism for users to report content that is abusive, illegal or inappropriate. In theory, anything reported which is illegal, abusive, or against the terms of use of each individual site, is deleted: the networks retain the right to delete anything they consider inappropriate.

But the networks do not check content before it goes onto their sites – it simply wouldn’t be practical for them to do so. Teams of moderators are commonly employed to scan through for inappropriate content, but obviously they can only see a percentage of the material uploaded. So social network’s safety measures are primarily designed to help social network users report abuse, not to prevent it in the first place. Nor is there a foolproof method of preventing under-age children signing up (indeed, it’s fairly widely accepted that pre-teens use social networks).

There are obvious risks for brands which don’t moderate the content posted onto their own branded channels on social networks (i.e. on a branded fan page, company profile page, group or channel). The most important is the safety of their users, particularly brands marketing to children or teenagers. The importance of providing a safe environment for children goes without saying, and brands have a duty to ensure that children are not exposed to abuse, bullying or even illegal content posted by unscrupulous users of their social network pages. Particularly given that there may be young children visiting these sites (even if the brand itself targets an older audience).

The reputation risk is also significant. Like it or not, content posted on a branded page will be associated with that brand. No responsible company wants to be associated with offensive content or bullying on their social network pages. In a review of Q4 2009, AdSafe found that a large portion of user generated content is a significant concern to advertisers with high sensitivity brands or high sensitivity industries.

On a community engagement level, the audience won’t come back to a site that is rendered unusable by people posting comment spam, or irrelevant messages. Many users will assume that brands check the content that goes onto their pages and so, if (for example) racist comments were to appear on a YouTube channel, users might assume the brand endorses those comments.

Let’s be clear – we are not talking about censorship (such as deleting negative comments about the brand), which is bad practice on any community; but about protecting users and brands’ reputations from abusive, illegal or inappropriate behaviour (spamming site users, overt sales pitches, bad language and so on).

So what should brands look out for?

The obvious issues to avoid are abusive and illegal content. But there are others, possibly less obvious things that brands should look out for. Some examples that we’ve come across include:

Users with names that include abusive or obscene words. Starbucks faced this problem when a user included a swastika in a profile picture.

Obviously off-topic posts such as spam, links to inappropriate websites and so on.

Non-fans: people who leave harassing messages (threatening ‘chain mail’ style messages, for example) or people who are just trying to sell fans a product.

It is possible to moderate the content on the big social networks. Each has its own rules, and terms and conditions of use. We’ve written a guide for brands and their agencies on moderating user generated content on social networks – Moderation on Social Networks – which shows what brands should look out for, and what’s possible on each of the ‘big four’ networks. The guide can be downloaded at http://www.emoderation.com/about/publications.

About the author:

Tamara Littleton is CEO of eModeration, a moderation and community management company which works directly with clients including MTV, ITV, Lifetime Games, 02, and ESPN as well as with agencies such as Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi, Euro RSCG, Wieden and Kennedy and Publicis. She is a member of the Home Office Sub Committee advising the British Government on moderation of communities to help safeguard children, and is currently revising the guidelines with the Moderation Sub Group as part of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. Tamara was also the Chair of e-mint (2006-2007), the online community for community professionals. She regularly speaks at conferences and contributes white papers to aid learning and development within the social media industry.

Relevant links:

Moderation on Social Networks – a white paper from eModeration.

http://www.emoderation.com/Moderation%20in%20Social%20Networks.pdf/view – eModeration’s blog.

http://twitter.com/eModeration - eModeration on Twitter.