I smell bullpoop!

However I see the reasoning, child abusers are often not children, therefore all adults should be placed in interment camps until they can prove that they are not child abusers.

Now all this failparty need to do is add all the emails and details they deleted to a list labeled "Deleted becouse they may be peadophiles" and then share that with other sites, then the government and then the media, and the total number of dangerous/active predatory peadophiles go from a few hundred to several hundred thousand! There by justifying all the insane numpty law that could follow.

...and would *never* lie about their age...

How long until Jacqui Smith claims that paedophiles are "using an area of the internet the size of Ireland"?

Sounds great, here's more possible deranged ideas:

a) men are more likely to be sex pests than women, so ban all men

b) students between 18-25 are likely to pretend to be younger than they are, so just ban all of them

c) younger members of the public are most at risk, so to protect them better, ban anyone under 16

I know someone will say 'but think of the kids!' I don't condone sex offence and I can suggest a few things that should happen to such offenders, but the usual response always seems overkill, and always makes the innocent feel guilty. Sex offenders don't care, they'll just go elsewhere, use a fake email (not like there's no way of getting any kind of mailinator account or anything), etc, while people who genuinely want to join are made to feel like criminals for the minority.

Here's another thought the govt should try - why not just ban the internet, then that should stop all illegal activities and get a few more votes....

Oh and one other thing. I'm not that age yet but 36 isn't exactly an 'oldie', but ageist aren't we?

that no staff member of facebook, its operating company, suppliers and the like is over 36 years old, because they, too, MIGHT be a paedophile.

But there again, some might lie about their age. Don't worry though: no self-respecting paedophile would do lie about his age just to re-register with Facebook.

Now would they?

and remove them all?

"We understand that only a minority of users are sex offenders, but you must understand that we cannot tell which"

"It was old style pedo-ing. Before it got such a bad name"

If it's only a "minority of older users", what's the percentage of "younger users"?

How can they claim this is not ageist, when they're clearly implying that sex offenders are all over 36 years of age? Perhaps I'm turning into a Meldrew type reaching the grand old age of 36 years 3 months and 5 days.

Oh no, that means I'm going to be a sex offender now... Time for the elastic band around the sensitive areas I think...

So much for the reports of teenage muggers - obviously being old is no longer a sign of stability and maturity - just a sign of descent into the grimy world of sex crimes.

If existing users get to 36 do they get to pay a visit to the carousel, or can they get renewed?

I used to be on faceparty. The overall age is fairly young, but at the time :

1) All users were over 16. People could lie, but that's what was stated.

2) Lewd pictures were practically encouraged, as this enabled faceparty to make money by restricting the pictures behind a payware barrier.

2a) There's an explicit 'agony aunt' column attached to the site

2b) Faceparty also attended the sex exhibition held at GMEX in Manchester selling membership, with the implication it was useful for hookups.

3) There were quite a few people considerably older than 30. There were chatrooms and so on especially set up for them by faceparty.

I'm sure it's a possibility that there are older people trying to take advantage of younger people, and that this should be prevented, but perhaps they should revisit the definition of 'paedophiles' when the user age is over 16...

Paedophiles? Rubbish. Probably due to them losing out to facebook and suchlike. I second the fact they're trying to rejuvenate a tired old website.

Posted as AC, as I really don't fancy being sued.

Assuming the story is true and not your usual run-of-the-mill fake, I'm... appalled. Not that they banned people from their site just because they claimed to be over 36. But because they thought it would make a single bit of difference. Last I heard, all the social-network based paedophiles that have been caught recently were using accounts where they claimed to be 15 years old or so, not over 36. So right there the website decision makers fail any sort of ability to think or process logical thought.

Alternatively, they're lying about what happened to cover something up. Exactly what they would try to cover up with such a ludicrous story is beyond my ken.

...to the appropriate body responsible for enforcing age discrimination laws. You can't offer a service to the public and bar users of a certain age/colour/sex/disability

If I tried to ban people above a certain age coming into my shop I'd quickly be up before the beak on an age discrimination charge.

Are YOU employing DecisionTards like this in YOUR organisation?

Err, making such a stupid and unjustified statement could well mean they open themselves up to a libel action. After all the are effectively saying we are deleting your account because we think you might be a sex paedophile. A lawyer would have a field day with that.

A stupid action which is obviously pointless as well.

...it would be more effective to ban children from social networking sites.

Isn't it funny how the most "progressive", "web 2.0", "open minded", "stick it to the man" people will put in place the most draconian and over the top rules and measures once they have a bit of power and responsibility?

"sex offenders registering their email addresses"

Yet again Ms Smith demonstrates her absolute incompetence over anything to do with IT.

Nobody has multiple email addresses do they? And once you have an email account, of course you can't have another one can you?

Silly cow.

As for faceparty, no sex offenders are under 36 are they? They just magically become perverts on their 36th birthday.

Silly twats.

Yup, child sex offenders will always tell the truth about their age, name and email address. After all what have they got to hide?

This is ridiculous beyond words, and being over the age of 36 I find this quite offensive.

More bullshit to match previous legislation that will only ever catch those that tell the truth and follow the rules. When is it going to click with those who make these policies/decisions/laws that criminals do not tell the truth nor follow the rules?

Those criminals that this kind of thing will catch are already offering themselves up to plod by posting self incriminating evidence on youtube.

"Despite malicious rumours spread by a few people on the website, it is not true that we have deleted members due to 'ageism'," its notice said.

From the OED: noun prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of age.

Deleting all accounts where the owner is over 36 sounds like a clear cut case of ageism to me.

Apart from the lack of a basic understanding of english, by ensuring that their site is full of kids they make it the prefered choice of paedophiles, thus demonstrating a complete lack of understanding about anything at all. Such a shame retardparty.com is already taken.

I was under the impression that age discrimination is illegal.

"And there are plenty of over 36s on Faceparty who use it to meet over over 36s."

Not any more there aren't!!!

"Can't wait for the first age discimination suit."

Not likely - it's a private site so they can do what they want. If they want to delete everyone over the age of 36 they can do that. They're only representing themselves, not anybody else, so are perfectly within their rights to do that.

On the other hand I DO NOT agree with it, and actions like this are to make stupid people in high positions think that FaceParty are doing a good thing. The age of 36 baffles me though - I have plenty of friends over 36 and none of them are paedophiles - in fact none of my friends are.

The world's going crazy. Now if you're over 36 you're a suspected paedophile - I dunno :(

At a guess, I'd say that someone's been watching too much Logan's Run.

Ah, the fiery ritual of Carousel...

if they aren't doing it to get a younger "more valuable" userbase (even though those in their late 20's to 30's will have more money than the teenager) then why don't they ban anyone under the age of 20?

If it's paedo's they're worried about, after the ban of kids from the site, I see no problem with a 36 year old pretending to be a 13 year old talking to another 40 year old pretending to be a 12 year old and arrange a meet up together.. hell, get some cctv footage of it and sell it as the next reality show!

What the hell? Even their quotes make them look fools:

"We understand that only a minority of older users are sex offenders, but you must understand that we cannot tell which," No sh1t Sherlock!!

"Despite malicious rumours spread by a few people on the website, it is not true that we have deleted members due to 'ageism'," Um, so let's choose an arbitrary reasoning to ban a certain segment of our population. Did they also ban all 36+ women? Why not just ban anyone under 16?

"because a gang of paedophiles had arrived on the website and had carried out a series of attacks on younger users". So why not close all accounts made after a certain date?

===

"It did say in its notice, though, that the site did have a serious problem with sex offenders." Again, close the Under-16's accounts then. Either way, sounds a great site to visit.

Wow, whose their PR spokesman? They're doing a great job today

Clearly Faceparty are either liars or idiots. I wonder which.

Facebook probably realise full well that they will have to backtrack on this one. They also know that most adults over the age of 36 once they realise that their account they carefully worked on (most of the over 36 yo's I know spent an eternity on pimping their pages) and building large networks, for the past 2 years, has all been deleted, will probably shrug their shoulders and go down the pub instead or wash the cars and cut the grass.

So by not giving notice and just deleting accounts, they have got rid of a large number of users they don't really want and avoided a huge furore that would have happenned if they had given notice, simply because older adults wouldn't get as stroppy as students/twentysomethings would do over their account and work being deleted.

The only oldies that would probably re-register would be the very people they say were the cause of the culling, the child abusers, and a few adults for who Facebook is their only social life, therefore they would be left with a much smaller population of over 36's to monitor for strange behaviour.