You'd have to be living under a rock or in regional Australia with Telstra as your ISP not to have heard about the tragic loss of a child's life in Bundaberg Qld earlier this week. As seems to be the trend in Australia and indeed worldwide, a facebook 'grievance' page was set up to honor the life of the little one who lost hers so early. But shortly after the page was made public it was 'vandalised' with, to be polite, insincere messages and illegal video footage. There is of course (and rightly so) shared outrage from the people close to the incident as well as governmental departments over the posting of this type of material on what is essentially a place intended to somehow ease the suffering of the Bundaberg community.

Following this incident, Anna Bligh, the Queensland Premier has apparently written a letter to Facebook CEO asking for the company to show some 'corporate responsibilty' in allowing these messages to be aired without moderation; they should not have been allowed to post it in the first place?  

This got me thinking about the recent stabbing of an Indian student in a Footscray park not long ago. This incident, kindled by the media attention given to earlier attacks on Indians across Melbourne, sparked international media coverage and debate, questioning Australian society's attitudes towards race-related discrimination. If we were to take Anna Bligh's approach to this stabbing, does this mean the councils are somewhat responsible for responding to or preventing stabbings (or any negative behaviour for that matter) in their parks all across Melbourne?

The way I see it, Facebook is the global public park. It's successful because people can communicate instantaneously with their 'friends'. Just like people meet for picnics, play frisbee or have a bbq in their local park. To add a layer of moderation to any content posting on Facebook would not only be infeasible from Facebook's business point of view, but would also spell the end for it's popularity as a social networking tool. People want to be able to communicate with each other without any delay at all - otherwise they'd just use email. The parallel I would draw between moderation of Facebook and public park would be like having 1 security guard at a park for everyone 1 group of people that decide to have a bbq that day or 1 person who chose a park bench to sit on whilst reading. What about automated moderation of content publishing you ask? Well, there's currently no technology that can look at an image or video and determine whether it complies with Facebook's terms of use. Just like there's no security camera you can put in a Footscray park to automatically determine whether two people are embracing happily or one has the other in a headlock trying to strangle him to death.

It's unclear to me whether government departments and the general public understand the limits of technology as it stands today because we've progressed so rapidly that it almost sometimes feels that anything is possible. Why can't technology determine the content of a post before it's made live to the world, it bloody well should shouldn't it? Well, we're simply not there yet.  What we are capable of doing though is connecting each and every person on the globe, if they choose, via online social networking tools like Facebook. The above incident on the little girl's grievance page is simply a one-off, it happens occasionally because one immature, non-sensical individual decides that it's humour. 

But what can one do? Kill what some would call the most popular, useful and world-changing internet application of our time because of a few bad eggs by enforcing moderation or simply shutting it all down? Well, if we're following that logic then it's time to kill all public spaces in the real world - parks, clubs, playgrounds, sporting venues, city streets, anywhere where anyone was ever bullied, punched, kicked or sworn at. That sounds like a very depressing world to me and I'm sure to anyone who enjoys leaving their house to walk down the street to the shops or go for a run with their dog around the block.

I can't pretend to have the answer to how these sorts of incidents should be handled. In the real-world, security cameras would be installed but even though we've had security cameras for many years in public spaces it hasn’t brought an end to all criminal activity. Although, they have helped solve many-a-crime that may have otherwise gone unsolved; but the beauty of the internet is everything (unless you’re very very computer savvy) is trackable. I believe Facebook as an organisation did respond appropriately by removing the questionable content as soon as they were made aware of it, and until the technology is there, it seems to be a trade-off between global connectivity and every once in a while, agreeing to deal with these issues of immaturity and vulgarity as a community - ignoring it so the bully doesn't get spurred on by all the other children in the playground. One could also argue that public grievance pages, because of the high emotional charge they carry are simply not a good idea but then you can't stop someone stealing a bunch of flowers laid at a telegraph pole on a highway where a loved one was once killed either. You see, there's just no simple solution. 

People need to grieve the loss of a loved one, it's a basic, emotional need and the internet is allowing communities to band together to show their support to one another - but perhaps there are other more private, idiot-proof solutions than holding a vigil in a global park where anyone and everyone can stumble on in and upset the sincerity of the occasion.