Website founder: I’m not to blame for suicides
In a statement five days after the death of 13-year-old Erin Gallagher, who lost her life after being targeted by cyberbullies, ask.fm founder Mark Terebin said society was to blame for the fatalities.
The dot.com businessman, from Riga in Latvia, did not address repeated concerns about the lack of monitoring on his site and the fact that random users can still anonymously post abusive messages on other users’ profiles. Both of these issues have been flagged by experts as playing a central role in the failure to prevent the cyberbullying of Erin, and Ciara Pugsley, a 15-year-old from Leitrim, who died last month after being targeted on the same site.
