Apparently, Facebook have threatened to sue over this article.

Mail have been frantically removing all references to Facebook throughout the day and have now tacked a 'clarification' on at the end:

In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.


Facebook say the Mail knew it wasn't their site when they went to press and yet went with it anyway. If you can believe the Mail doing such a thing...

That's made my year! It's about time the DM pissed on someone who can punch back. I sincerely hope Facebook push this forward.

Does this mean the agenda will be abandoned, and therefore the end of this thread? Or will this just piss off the bile-mongers even more?

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Soppy anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration, anti-family nonentity

The Mail will sulk quietly for a while, all the time developing an ever more bitter and irrational grudge. When the time is right (maybe a year later) expect a continual stream of snide but subtly unactionable articles.

Forgot to add a link to a website that's been tracking the story:
www.globaldashboard.org/2010/03/10/daily-mail-facebook/

But it seems to have gone down at the moment.

It said that when the first draft was sent to the quoted 'expert', he asked them to remove all references to Facebook but they decided not to.

Although it took most of the day for the Mail to post a clarification, it's funny how quickly that appeared, comparatively, when a wealthy company threatens legal action.

Somehow they forget to act that quick when dealing with members of the public who complain.

Facebook - reckoned to be worth between $3 and $5 billion dollars...
Could eat the Mail for a snack.

They've changed the text this morning so it describes a generic social networking site and not specifically Facebook. They haven't changed the headline though - FAIL

Edit: Oops, being half asleep I hadn't noticed this had already been mentioned. EPIC FAIL

Having had a number of comments yesterday accusing them outright of lying, they're moderating them today. What a surprise.

Funnily enough I'd just read that article myself. She's only saying what we do here all the time about lunkheaded right-wing facebook groups, so we can't really complain.

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"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
Voltaire

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Join the Mailwatch Daily Express "Political cartoonist of the year" Paul Thomas Facebook group

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/11/facebook-daily-mail

The guardian report on the situation. Looks like DM are scrambling to make all changes as requested by Facebook now



That says it all really. Even the author of the article comes out and says they knew it was wrong but went with it anyway.

By all accounts Facebook tried to post comments on the story, but they never appeared. How very strange...

Amongst so many other things the Mail doesn't understand the First Rule of Holes.

The Indy is also carrying this story now on the front of it's website. From the sounds of it, Facebook are still pretty likely to take legal action considering the extent to which the story was smeared all over the print edition (front page, followed by an interior double-spread).

Of course nothing about this story is anything even approaching a surprise to most of us, but here's hoping it opens some eyes of the general public to the hateful innuendo this rag has been discharging for decades.

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Soppy anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration, anti-family nonentity

Mind you, I bet I know the 'well-known' social networking site that the cop did use.

It's also on the BBC site

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters ... _mail.html

with some excellent comments.

I'd have thought Williams-Thomas has a good claim against the Mail, if he finds an enterprising no win no fee libel lawyer: they've effectively portrayed him as someone who lied about the website he went onto, and an idiot as well.