Schools began to track student accounts in social networks

Teachers in the Tyumen region began a census of student accounts in social networks, mainly on VKontakte, according to Izvestia. This is done as part of an experiment conducted by the League of Safe Internet. Members of the organization track the groups in which the children are made up, and if any of them join the so-called “group of death” - they inform the parents.

In LBI claim that thanks to the work carried out, it was possible to prevent suicide of about 30 people. Now this experience is planned to be transferred to the whole of Russia, Denis Davydov, the head of the league, told the publication.

The monitoring of social media pages is done by the LBI activists, or as they call themselves - “cyberdrugs”. They also browse social networks for "death groups" and child porn.

The department of education of the Tyumen region helped get information about the pages of schoolchildren; the lists of accounts were made up by local teachers who were later transferred to the LBI.

The first stage of the LBI’s work is to search for members of the “death groups” among the students listed on the lists and the subsequent analysis by psychologists If the latter makes a verdict that the threat of suicide exists, then the child is deanonymized, and the juvenile affairs inspectorate is connected to the process for further work with parents.

The official representative of the social network "VKontakte" Yevgeny Krasnikov does not consider the "manual" approach of the LBI effective:

“We fight with them both on our own, regularly monitoring the site, and responding to signals from users and the regulator - Roskomnadzor. Such communities are blocked forever and without the right to appeal. We believe that the approach proposed by LBI is unlikely to lead to a solution to this problem. The proposed actions will most likely lead to the fact that the problem being discussed goes into the shadows - adolescents will begin to create and use new accounts and methods of communication, the existence of which none of their relatives and teachers will have an idea. We have already seen such phenomena many times, ”he said.

Lawyer Anton Bogatov also spoke out against the League’s actions. According to him, the issue of opposition to "death groups" is in the area of ​​responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, since the Criminal Code contains an article "bringing to suicide."

Since December 22, specialists have visited 27 families. The Tyumen experience in the LBI is considered successful and they plan to transfer it to other regions. Davydov said that the league already has an agreement with the Omsk region.

LBI methods are contradictory. As the representative of "Vkontakte" said, such activity will only lead to a tightening of anonymity, both among administrators of such groups and among ordinary students. It is also not known how teachers and private individuals will dispose of the data obtained on accounts in social networks, and according to the law, it is impossible to force a child to provide such information.

In addition, the League shows its incompetence in these matters, since in addition to creating a second account, the child can simply restrict access to information on his main page as much as possible - first of all to groups for all categories of users. And the only thing that in this case remains for activists who use administrative resources, IDNs and lists in their “work” is to put pressure on the child to change the privacy settings, which cannot be called effective and legal in every sense.