Facebook is offering millions of pounds of free advertising to children’s charities as part of a charm offensive following a row with police over the installation of an online safety button.
Charities will meet this week to decide whether to accept the offer from the social networking site. However, the NSPCC told The Times that it would reject the advertising were it to be an alternative to installing the safety button pioneered by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.
Facebook has been in a dispute with the police agency over the website’s refusal to carry the button — which would give users one-click access to police or other agencies to report concerns about online offending or cyber-bullying. The argument intensified after the murder conviction of Peter Chapman, a sex offender, who posed as a teenager online to lure a 17-year-old to her death.
Although chief constables and the main political parties want Facebook to install a safety button, the site has refused to do so. Instead it has announced a safety and awareness campaign which it says will include donating a billion advertising impressions to charities over the next two years.
The NSPCC said: “If Facebook has any proposals that would make children safer, we would be happy to hear about that. But we would not be interested in anything as an alternative to the alert button.”
Emma-Jane Cross, of the charity BeatBullying, said that it “would welcome the opportunity to work with Facebook to help them set up a panic button system, something we have done with Bebo and MSN”. However, the charity added that it would accept the free advertising offer, were it made, in order to spread the anti-bullying message. Both charities are members of the Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety which on Thursday will discuss Facebook’s proposals.
After meeting the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre last week in Washington, Facebook said that it was determined to “promote ‘safe interaction’ practices online” and had “invited the UK’s leading internet safety organisations to join the campaign and to share their expertise”.
The company said that giving the charities advertising space would be “the equivalent of a million safety messages from experts every day. The goal is to help everyone know what to do if they feel threatened”.
A source at one charity described the company’s offer as “a cynical approach to try and appear nice and cuddly”.
Children’s charities back the call for the safety button but most are expected to accept the offer of free advertising.
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