Craigslist & Facebook Highlight the Need for Standards in Content

Keeping a keen eye on your sites content has very much come into the public focus over the past couple of weeks. There has been building public anger over Facebook’s acceptance of Holocaust denial pages, in which anti-Semitic discussions are freely passed between users. They have subsequently relented and confirmed the removal of two groups at the beginning of last week, but does social media really have a social conscience?

Craigslist, the American supersite covering adverts for almost anything, last week also had to begrudgingly admit that it would ditch erotic adverts after it was found that these pages were soliciting prostitution, bringing the site a lot of unwelcome attention from the media and the law. All of which has left a dark cloud hanging over social media as a whole.

Any site can fail due to its content. Okay, so if your website contains a few typos, a bit of underwhelming copy and some broken links it isn’t going to have quite the same impact as the above cases; but you need to ensure you are fully aware of what is contained within your pages at all times, otherwise you could end up losing potential customers, or even worse.

This provides a sobering reminder of just how important it is for Webmasters, SEO Marketers and everyone involved in the building and running of a website, to keep on top of content. Facebook and Craigslist are two hugely popular sites and a haven for social marketers everywhere. With millions across the world using them each day, this is a very real wake up call for them to clean up their act.

Negative publicity such as this will do nothing to dispel the notion among some people that social media is having a negative impact on the Internet and even society as a whole. There are however, still a lot of positive applications for social media, so while these stories are damaging, no doubt they should also help improve standards in the future.

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