Prosecutor Gives Facebook the MySpace Treatment

Facebook sought to tamp down allegations leveled late Monday by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that the wildly popular social networking site harbors sexual predators.

News of the subpoena, which requires Facebook to give Cuomo documents about child porn complaints leveled at the company, came on the same day that the Microsoft was said to have agreed to buy a 5 percent stake in the company for between $300 million and $500 million—valuing all of Facebook at as much as $10 billion.

Facebook is also under pressure from Google, which has decided to challenge the social networking phenom.

The company declined to comment on either the Microsoft deal of the challenge from Google. But Facebook did respond to Cuomo's subpoena:

"We take the concerns of the Office of the New York Attorney General very seriously," Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker said in a statement. "We strive to uphold our high standards for privacy on Facebook and are constantly working on processes and technologies that will further improve safety and user control on the site."

"We are committed to working closely with all the state attorneys general to maintain a trusted environment for all Facebook users and to demonstrate the efficacy of these efforts."

Last week, News Corp. overlord Rupert Murdoch—owner of Facebook rival MySpace—declared, "If you wanted to stalk a young girl on Facebook, it would be very, very easy."

He should know, of course. In May, under pressure from all 50 state attorneys general, Murdoch's MySpace embarrassingly admitted that it had found that 7,000 convicted sexual predators had posted online profiles on that social networking site. It promised to delete them all.

by Sam Gustin