Vile Threats Posted Against A Young Girl Show Why We Need To Shut Down ASK FM

I absolutely hate Ask.FM. I have said it before and I am saying it again here. Any parent who lets their kid have an account on this website is opening up their kid to bullying, harassment, and threats of the worst kind. Last time I wrote about the site I was met with comments from people who said that parents should pay more attention to what their kids are doing, that ASK FM should not be to blame for this, that the website has its merits because it allows pre-teens and teens to expresses themselves anonymously and that it allows them to be open with their peers – screw that. I don’t care. It needs to be shut down.

A  19-year-old physics major at the University Of Wisconsin, Madison has been arrested due to threats he made against a 14-year-old girl who asked the question on ASK FM :

‘Do you go to skyline?’

 

Which is a high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Rishi Ragsdale, the son of two college professors, answered the young girls question with replies like this, taken from the affidavits posted by The Smoking Gun. WARNING, THE FOLLOWING IS A HUGE TRIGGER WARNING SO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK: 

And it gets worse.

From The Daily Mail:

Armed with the sender’s IP address on Ask.fm, investigators were able to track down Ragsdale and determine that the 19-year-old’s university student account, rragsdale, was used to log into Ask.fm on the evening the threats were sent.

When police executed a search warrant at his Madison home Wednesday, Ragsdale claimed that he ‘didn’t know what this was about’ before asking for a lawyer.

For those of you who still feel like this website is harmless, at least nine suicides have been linked to online bullying in conjunction with ASK FM. It is one of the most visited websites in the world, especially amongst those under 20. It needs to be shut down. This website does nothing but foster the sort of comments, to YOUNG KIDS, that Ragsdale made above. This goes well beyond the typical “You’re ugly” or “You’re a whore” so many users of this website receive.

I see no point in letting kids have accounts here. And a parent, I make sure this is one website my kids NEVER visit.I’d love to hear arguments about why parents think this website is important for kids to have, but due to all this I doubt I’ll change my mind.

(Image: ASK FM)