Jo Swinson and Randi Zuckerberg – accelerating towards a digital meltdown

Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook. His sister Randi works in the marketing department. She used Facebook to circulate a family photograph to her friends. She was shocked to discover that the photograph was promptly published for all and sundry to see. The story is covered by Forbes magazine, 26 December 2012 @ 8:52 a.m., 904,546 views at the time of writing:

Oops. Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Has A Private Facebook Photo Go Public. Being a member of the Facebook founder’s family won’t protect you from having your privacy breached on the social network. On Tuesday night, Randi Zuckerberg — older sister to Facebook’s CEO — posted a photo from a family gathering to Facebook (of course), showing her sisters using Facebook’s new Snapchat-esque ’Poke’ app on their phones, with Mark Zuckerberg watching with a confused look on his face. It popped up on the Facebook newsfeed of mediaite Callie Schweitzer who subscribes to Zuckerberg. Assuming the photo was a public one, Schweitzer tweeted it to her nearly 40,000 Twitter followers. Zuckerberg was not pleased.

Mr Zuckerberg may not be the only one with a confused look on his face – what does it all mean? Forbes explain the unfortunate incident thus:

The Facebook Privacy Setting That Tripped Up Randi Zuckerberg ... Callie Schweitzer ... thought the photo was a public one when she spotted it in her newsfeed. In fact, she saw it because she was friends with a person tagged in the photo, one of the Zuckerberg sisters. She was able to see the photo because of a privacy setting that you may or may not realize exists. When you post a photo, you have a range of options as to who gets to see it, from the generic ones — Public, Friends, Fill-In-Your-Schoo-Here, Fill-In-Your-Work-Here — to any lists you may have created — Creepers, Ex-Boyfriends, People I barely remember, Family, People I secretly hate, etc. You may choose “Friends,” as Randi Zuckerberg did, and think your photos can then only be seen by your friends… but you’d be wrong.

It looks as though Ms Zuckerberg made a mistake. As though she got her privacy settings wrong. That wouldn't be surprising. Designing the protocol even for fairly primitive social intercourse is hard work and it can take years of negotiation before the experts involved agree. Then you've got to educate people how to use the protocol. That takes time, too.

Facebook doesn't have years. More like months or even weeks. The company publishes dozens of pages of information about Facebook's privacy settings. People may or may not read them and/or understand them. Mistakes are bound to be made.

Some readers will remember 36 years ago when IBM came up with Resource Access Control Facility, RACF – a system to make sure that only properly authorised users could access any given network resources. It was hard work getting it right then. It still is. The difficulty is unavoidable. Wherever access control is required, wherever there are privacy settings to be made, wherever you need to grant or withhold permission, expect problems.

Wherever. That includes midata, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) initiative which is meant to "empower" consumers.

BIS want us all to maintain Personal Data Stores (PDSs) on the web. They claim that we shall have control over the data in our PDSs. We shall be able, they say, to grant access to our data to some suppliers and withhold it from others. Some apps will have permission to use our data. Others won't.

BIS's favoured PDS supplier seems to be Mydex and according to their website:

Mydex gives individuals back control over their personal data

Really? Like Facebook? Storing all our data on the web with an unknown third party gives us control over it? How? What is there to stop us all ending up in the embarrassing situation of Randi Zuckerberg with all our personal data published for all to see?

If we agree to use PDSs, nothing.

These questions were put to Ed Davey a year ago when he was the first minister in charge of midata. How will midata put consumers in control? He didn't answer. Neither did his officials. The same questions have been recently put to Jo Swinson*, the latest minister in charge. Same response. And they have been put to Mydex several times over the past 18 months. Still no answer.

It's not just BIS promising to give us control over our own data. The UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) are doing the same, Digital public services: putting the citizen in charge, not the state. Seven so-called "identity providers" have been appointed to put us citizens in charge, Mydex being one of them.

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken is the chief executive of GDS and the senior responsible officer owner for the UK government's Identity Assurance Programme. The idea is to create a platform involving these identity providers from which we can all access public services. As Bracken says:

Accelerating towards a digital future ... We will look to improve user journeys across the platform, add more transactional services and offer richer functionality, especially social features ... Our design and creative teams will ensure a simple, consistent and beautiful experience for all users ...

No reason has ever been advanced to believe GDS's claim that accessing public services can be just as easy and fun as using Facebook and Google and Amazon and eBay – the rigours of RACF persist, however jauntily GDS pretend that we can all be put in charge. And as Randi Zuckerberg's experience makes clear, it isn't always easy and fun using Facebook.

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* Jo Swinson has now kindly promised to respond:

@dmossesq thanks for flagging up, on blackberry right now but will endeavour to reply when at my laptop — Jo Swinson(@joswinson) December 28, 2012

Jo Swinson and Randi Zuckerberg – accelerating towards a digital meltdown

Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook. His sister Randi works in the marketing department. She used Facebook to circulate a family photograph to her friends. She was shocked to discover that the photograph was promptly published for all and sundry to see. The story is covered by Forbes magazine, 26 December 2012 @ 8:52 a.m., 904,546 views at the time of writing:

Oops. Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Has A Private Facebook Photo Go Public. Being a member of the Facebook founder’s family won’t protect you from having your privacy breached on the social network. On Tuesday night, Randi Zuckerberg — older sister to Facebook’s CEO — posted a photo from a family gathering to Facebook (of course), showing her sisters using Facebook’s new Snapchat-esque ’Poke’ app on their phones, with Mark Zuckerberg watching with a confused look on his face. It popped up on the Facebook newsfeed of mediaite Callie Schweitzer who subscribes to Zuckerberg. Assuming the photo was a public one, Schweitzer tweeted it to her nearly 40,000 Twitter followers. Zuckerberg was not pleased.

Identity assurance – the clock is ticking, your moderation is awaiting comment

28 September 2012 and a reply to yesterday's enquiry has whizzed in from GDS, followed by a reply to the reply:

steve # Thanks for your comment, David. Firstly, please don’t take our lack of posts as evidence of inaction. We’ve actually been incredibly busy over the summer and are expecting a bumper crop of posts in October, to share what we’ve been up to. So, watch this space. Secondly, DWP are still working to resolve final contractual issues. The outcome will only be made public when final contracts are signed. Steve 28/09/2012 steve # Furthermore, this notification will come from DWP, not Cabinet Office or GDS, as it is their framework. 28/09/2012 dmossesq # Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation. Dear Mr Wreyford Thank you for your reply. I don’t mistake the absence of posts for inactivity – as I said, surely there must have been some activity in view of the importance of Universal Credit. You say that “DWP are still working to resolve final contractual issues”. Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken made it clear on 1 March 2012 that Identity Assurance belongs to the Cabinet Office and not DWP: “… this approach ensures that, ultimately, HMG-wide Identity Assurance is supplied across central departments via a common procurement portal (to HMG agreed standards) and governed by the Cabinet Office”. Presumably GDS are involved in those “final contractual issues” just as much as if not more than DWP*. The absence of posts does create a vacuum, though, which draws in all sorts of flotsam … The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) midata initiative, for example. Why are GDS using BIS to try to legislate for Personal Data Stores/Inventories (PDSs/PDIs) instead of doing it themselves? And GOV.UK – why waste a lot of time and money re-writing central government websites? Is it to provide consistent hooks for PDS-based identity assurance in all government communications over the web? A PDS is a dynamic dematerialised ID card, isn’t it. The public won’t “wear it”. Neither will the banks if the Cabinet Office try to insert PDSs into the nation’s payment systems. If Google and/or Facebook turn out to be on the list of GDS-approved suppliers of identity assurance services, then DWP and everyone else will have wasted their time negotiating any contractual issues, final or otherwise. Again, the public won’t wear it. And the GOV.UK team will have wasted their time. And BIS will have wasted their credibility … Goodness, just look at all that dust, you never can tell what the vacuum’s going to draw up, can you. The sooner GDS can tell an expectant public what you’ve come up with identity assurancewise, the better. ———- * While writing this reply of mine, your second reply popped up, trying to push responsibility back on to DWP. Too late, Mr Wreyford. The Cabinet Office burnt their bridges when they made DWP withdraw their December 2011 OJEU notice. You know that. If Universal Credit fails for lack of identity assurance, that will be the Cabinet Office’s fault now and not DWP’s. 28/09/2012

The last comment will only appear on the GDS blog after moderation by them and only if they want it to appear.

Identity assurance – the clock is ticking, your moderation is awaiting comment

28 September 2012 and a reply to yesterday's enquiry has whizzed in from GDS, followed by a reply to the reply:

Identity assurance – the clock is ticking, your comment is awaiting moderation

27 September 2012 9:30-ish, posted on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog here and here:

dmossesq # Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation. Steve Wreyford’s post on OIX is the latest on the ID assurance blog and is dated 14 June 2012, three months ago. Has there been no activity on identity assurance since then? Surely there must have been some, GDS are due to announce by the end of September – 85 hours time – which bidders have been approved to provide identity assurance services as per the 1 March 2012 notice in OJEU. When will we be told who the winners are? 27/09/2012

Identity assurance – the clock is ticking, your comment is awaiting moderation

27 September 2012 9:30-ish, posted on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog here and here:

dmossesq # Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation. Steve Wreyford’s post on OIX is the latest on the ID assurance blog and is dated 14 June 2012, three months ago. Has there been no activity on identity assurance since then? Surely there must have been some, GDS are due to announce by the end of September – 85 hours time – which bidders have been approved to provide identity assurance services as per the 1 March 2012 notice in OJEU. When will we be told who the winners are? 27/09/2012

What price privacy? $2.08

With thanks to SheffieldForum.co.uk –

"For everything Sheffield"

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

So said Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, and many people say they agree with him. Let's call those people "Roundheads".

Cavaliers believe that privacy is an essential ingredient in the recipe for human beings. Miss it out, and you cook up something different, not a human being.

Our location can be tracked by the mobile phone companies. Google records every website we visit. Our entire life history is on Facebook. Our every instantaneous emotional reaction is documented on Twitter. GCHQ want to store all our email headers. David Cameron wants to give all our medical records to researchers. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills wants us to maintain Personal Data Stores with so-called "trusted third parties" we've never met. DWP and the Cabinet Office want the same, so that we can all transact with the government on-line. The G-Cloud Puritans want to store all this data in the cloud with Amazon and others on servers that could be anywhere in the world ...

"There's something wrong with all this", say the Cavaliers. "No there isn't", say the Roundheads, "get over it". And so the argument continues, forever unresolved.

Except, sometimes, even the Roundheads briefly grasp the need for privacy, the importance of privacy, its value:

Claims that the privacy of direct messages sent between Facebook users had been compromised and that the messages were appearing publicly on users' timelines are false, the social networking service has said. There was confusion on Monday amid reports in France that non-public messages sent in the years from 2007 onwards had started to appear in timelines, sparking many users to check back in the fear that potentially embarrassing private messages had become widely viewable. Facebook's share price fell 9.1% to $20.79 at the close in New York on the back of the fears, the biggest drop since 27 July. The stock has slumped 45% since its May initial public offering, and hasn't traded above its $38 IPO price since the day after the share sale.

It is disputed whether people are right to fear that Facebook's privacy controls have failed. That's not the point.

The point is that the fear – whether or not it's well-founded – knocked 9.1% off Facebook's share price.

What price privacy? $2.08

With thanks to SheffieldForum.co.uk –

"For everything Sheffield"

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

So said Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, and many people say they agree with him. Let's call those people "Roundheads".

Cavaliers believe that privacy is an essential ingredient in the recipe for human beings. Miss it out, and you cook up something different, not a human being.

Our location can be tracked by the mobile phone companies. Google records every website we visit. Our entire life history is on Facebook. Our every instantaneous emotional reaction is documented on Twitter. GCHQ want to store all our email headers. David Cameron wants to give all our medical records to researchers. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills wants us to maintain Personal Data Stores with so-called "trusted third parties" we've never met. DWP and the Cabinet Office want the same, so that we can all transact with the government on-line. The G-Cloud Puritans want to store all this data in the cloud with Amazon and others on servers that could be anywhere in the world ...

"There's something wrong with all this", say the Cavaliers. "No there isn't", say the Roundheads, "get over it". And so the argument continues, forever unresolved.

Identity assurance – the clock is ticking, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's chickens are coming home to roost

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is part of the Cabinet Office and has six projects on hand, including Identity Assurance:

The ID Assurance team are working on accrediting and approving third party identity to facilitate digital transactions between citizens and government.

If "citizens" and the government are to transact business on-line, there must be a rock solid identity assurance service so that each party knows who it's dealing with. Invitations to tender for the service were issued earlier this year.

GDS haven't so far publicly approved any third parties to provide identity assurance, but we shouldn't have long to wait – no more than five days, in fact:

The tendering process will run for several weeks and is expected to report successful bidders in September 2012.

Delays are only to be expected. Identity assurance for the entire population of the UK is a big project.

But in this case there can't be any delays. The joint GDS/DWP notice of the identity assurance project states that identity assurance is required to be ...

... fully operational from spring 2013.

That's six months time if we measure to the start of next spring, or nine months if we measure to the end. Either way, DWP's Universal Credit (UC) scheme has to be up and running by October 2013 and UC depends on identity assurance as Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, has emphasised – no identity assurance, no UC.

Appearing before the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee, Lord Freud was asked what is the biggest risk facing UC. His answer – identity assurance.

Why did DWP allow this dependency/risk? Why didn't they write their own invitation to tender?

They did. Then they withdrew it. Apparently at the command of the Cabinet Office. Because next thing, GDS announced that:

... this approach ensures that, ultimately, HMG-wide Identity Assurance is supplied across central departments via a common procurement portal (to HMG agreed standards) and governed by the Cabinet Office.

"Governed by the Cabinet Office" – GDS have put themselves on the spot. If UC fails now, is it Iain Duncan Smith's fault? Or Francis Maude's?

GDS must approve several accredited suppliers of identity assurance services in the next 120 hours. Who's likely to be on the list?

GDS are only offering up to £30 million for the identity assurance service and they're only letting contracts for 18 months.

The Home Office tried for eight years to issue us all with ID cards. They failed.

Which companies can afford to assure the identities of everyone in the UK – or at least the identities of the 21 million expected claimants for UC – for only £30 million? Which companies can afford to take the risk of losing their contract to a competitor only 18 months later? Not many of them. It can only be a short list.

The banks/credit card companies/PayPal, the phone companies, the utility companies and IBM might be big and competent enough. But they have to think about the failure of the Home Office and about reputational risk.

They wouldn't be in control of the identity assurance service. GDS would be, and if anything went wrong, even if it wasn't the contractors' fault, the banks/phone companies/utility companies/IBM would see their brands destroyed.

Any chief executive of a bank/phone company/... who signs up for one of these GDS identity assurance contracts would be roasted by the equity analysts and by their shareholders. Which means they won't.

We can probably forget the insurance companies and the credit rating agencies. Who else does that leave?

Google and Facebook.

In no more than 118 hours now and counting, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of the Government Digital Service and Senior Responsible Officer Owner for the Identity Assurance programme, is going to have to host a press conference at which he announces that he thinks it's a good idea for Google and Facebook to provide the electronic identities of everyone in the UK.

If you get an invitation, don't miss it.

Identity assurance – the clock is ticking, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's chickens are coming home to roost

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is part of the Cabinet Office and has six projects on hand, including Identity Assurance:

The ID Assurance team are working on accrediting and approving third party identity to facilitate digital transactions between citizens and government.

If "citizens" and the government are to transact business on-line, there must be a rock solid identity assurance service so that each party knows who it's dealing with. Invitations to tender for the service were issued earlier this year.

GDS haven't so far publicly approved any third parties to provide identity assurance, but we shouldn't have long to wait – no more than five days, in fact:

The tendering process will run for several weeks and is expected to report successful bidders in September 2012.

Delays are only to be expected. Identity assurance for the entire population of the UK is a big project.

Amazon, Google, Facebook et al – the latter-day pied pipers of Hamelin

The earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a stained glass window placed in the Church of Hamelin c. 1300. The window was described in several accounts between the 14th century and the 17th century ... This window is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the town. Also, Hamelin town records start with this event. The earliest written record is from the town chronicles in an entry from 1384 which states: "It is 100 years since our children left". (Wikipedia)

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The children
In December 2011, Facebook had 845 million monthly active users, of which 483 million were daily active users. That's a lot of children.

While children follow the music, grown-ups follow the money.

As Martin Sorrell says, influencing social networks is an extremely powerful way of building brands and trust in brands. That's why the hidden persuaders pay for Facebook, Google and other platforms. That's why the people who think they are the users don't pay. We're not the users, we people who do scores of Google searches every day and who meticulously update our Facebook pages and who tweet our every passing thought. Users pay. We're the product.

Mr Zuckerberg doesn't work hard every day developing Facebook because he loves organising parties. And Mr Schmidt doesn't spend a fortune every day improving search algorithms, giving away Google AdWords coupons and suggesting the optimal route between A and B on Google Maps because he hates people to get lost. Only a child would believe that.

Mr Sorrell (WPP) gives money to Messrs Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Schmidt (Google). And Messrs Zuckerberg and Schmidt give us to Mr Sorrell. Willing buyer, willing seller, we're neither – in this exchange we're the product.

The burgomasters
Meanwhile in the Whitehall district of Hamelin, a confused burgomaster is trying to think how to kickstart the economy. If only my townspeople would maintain a personal data store ... I could launch a midata initiative ... hey wait a minute, 30 million of them already have Facebook pages and a growing number have Google+ accounts ... maiden's prayer ... answer ...

Meanwhile in the Whitehall district of Hamelin, another confused burgomaster is trying to think how to modernise public administration. If only my townspeople had electronic identities ... I could launch an Identity Assurance service (IdA) ... public services could become digital by default ... the Government Digital Service (GDS) ... hey wait a minute ...

Meanwhile in the Whitehall district of Hamelin, all the confused burgomasters are justifiably sorry for themselves. As if we haven't got enough problems ... kickstarting the economy ... communicating with the townspeople ... the bloody townspeople – excuse my French – and their damned residents' associations ... always moaning ... the Public Administration Select Committee ... the Public Accounts Committee ... the Home Affairs Committee ... it's never-ending ... and the wretched impertinent National Audit Office ... ILA ... CSA ... Tax credits ... NPfIT ... FiReControl ... ID cards ... Libra ... NOMS ... Aspire ... IABS ... UC ... RTI ...

... which brings us to ...

The rats
Infested with management consultants with scaly tails and bloated bewhiskered contractors, the Hamelin government IT systems are "unacceptable", says the Schweinhund Chris Chant – pardon my Switzerdeutsch – and it's about time the burgomasters who aren't up to the job got out.

So who will rid us of the rats?

The piper(s)
Tim Berners-Lee?

... individual users were not yet being allowed to exploit all the information relating to them to make their lives easier. Armed with the information that social networks and other web giants hold about us, he said, computers will be able to "help me run my life, to guess what I need next, to guess what I should read in the morning, because it will know not only what's happening out there but also what I've read already, and also what my mood is, and who I'm meeting later on".

Maybe not.

Martha Lane Fox?

Asked by a local authority official whether older channels needed to be "shut off" for savings to be realised, she replied: "Yes, absolutely. That's fundamental to digital by default. "It's not an option to keep sending people paper when they are perfectly able to use a digital service. It's not an option to keep a call centre going when you see volume go dramatically down. So of course, you have to turn channels off."

Maybe not.

Werner Vogels? (Who? You know. Werner. Werner Vogels. The Chief Technology Officer of Amazon Web Services, AWS. That's who.)

"We are trying to break through the traditional model of enterprise software development," Vogels said, reiterating the AWS mantra for those who have not heard it before. "Core to the old style of doing business was that enterprises were being held hostage with very long-term contracts because that was the only way that you were able to drive your costs down. What is important is that you should keep your providers on their toes every day. "If we are not delivering the right quality of services, you should be able to walk away. You, the consumer of these services, should be in full control. That is core to our philosophy. And with that also comes the belief that if you help us gain economies of scale, and if we together operate to get increased efficiencies out of our platform, you should benefit from that." This is why, Vogels said, AWS has cut its prices 19 times on various services – it now offers more than 30 services, ranging from compute and storage clouds to various database, load balancing, and application frame work services. The most recent price cuts, announced in early March, have resulted in some S3 customers seeing their bills drop by 40 per cent and some EC2 users seeing a 32 per cent drop. "Why would we do this?" asked Vogels rhetorically. "Because we believe that we should help you be more successful. If you are more successful, in the long run, we will have benefit from that as well. This is a pure win-win situation for all of us."

Now you're talking my language, said each burgomaster, assuming that the other burgomasters knew what the Double Dutch Mr Vogels was talking about. A 32% cut for the EC2s? Sounds good. And the S3s are doing even better, with 40%! Maybe Chris Chant was right. Maybe we should modernise ourselves ... and get rid of those rats once and for all.

And it's not just AWS. There are more pipers where they came from. Google cloud services. Microsoft Windows Azure. IBM SmartCloud. Apple iCloud. To name but a few.

Music to my ears, said each burgomaster, as though they'd never heard of predatory pricing and antitrust, and they all went off for a free lunch.

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In some accounts it is hard to tell the burgomasters from the children. Or the rats from the pipers, come to that. Harder still when you see how many burgomasters were recruited by rats after their early and well-funded retirement, or joined pipers.

The earliest mention of the story seems to have been in a doodle on the home page of Google c. 2028. The doodle was described in several tweets between the 21st century and the 24th century ... This doodle is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the town when all central and local government records went up in a puff of smoke or, more poetically, a "cloud".

Also, the Whitehall town log now starts with this event. The earliest text record is from the town Facebook page in an entry from 2112 which states simply:

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Updated: 3.3.14

NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says A prominent Tory MP on the powerful health select committee has questioned how the entire NHS hospital patient database for England was handed over to management consultants who uploaded it to Google servers based outside the UK ... The patient information had been obtained by PA Consulting, which claimed to have secured the "entire start-to-finish HES dataset across all three areas of collection – inpatient, outpatient and A&E".

Update 2.6.14

A rueful article by Hugh Muir in the Guardian, Internet giants wooed us, but the honeymoon is over, nails the point, "we have been seduced. We have been lured by soft music and friendly adverts into a relationship that is anything but equal, and threatens to turn abusive".

Updated 26.8.14

We wanted the web for free – but the price is deep surveillance Advertising has become the online business model but by its very nature it involves corporations spying on users to produce more targeted results

Updated 27.8.14

Data guardian Sir Nigel Shadbolt on privacy versus freedom ... today we’re paying more attention to the big corporates and internet giants that sit on huge deposits of our data and stare back at us from the other side of the screen. Google, for example, has become a monopoly more powerful than many states.

Updated 26.4.15

Amazon Web Services is showing traditional IT players how they need to change Amazon Web Services (AWS) is clearly doing something right. The e-commerce giant has split out AWS revenues for the first time in its latest financial results, revealing a $5bn business growing at nearly 50% year on year. AWS has shown the big, traditional IT players the way to do public cloud - defining the market for infrastructure (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) along the way, forcing the likes of IBM, HP, Oracle and Microsoft to respond. Amazon is by far and away the dominant public cloud player ...

Always worth reading, that is from Bryan Glick's latest editorial in Computer Weekly magazine. He's right about that. The Pied Piper is surging.

Mr Glick adds:

Amazon has achieved $5bn of cloud revenue at a time when there are still widespread fears about cloud - related particularly to security and data protection - that prevent many large organisations, especially in heavily regulated sectors like financial services, from moving to public cloud. But those fears will be overcome; the sceptics will be convinced; the laggards will be forced to catch up. A tipping point is approaching.

Is that right?

Are the sceptics laggards? Or are they the responsible custodians of our "security and data protection"? Ours and our children's.

Amazon, Google, Facebook et al – the latter-day pied pipers of Hamelin

The earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a stained glass window placed in the Church of Hamelin c. 1300. The window was described in several accounts between the 14th century and the 17th century ... This window is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the town. Also, Hamelin town records start with this event. The earliest written record is from the town chronicles in an entry from 1384 which states: "It is 100 years since our children left". (Wikipedia)

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The children
In December 2011, Facebook had 845 million monthly active users, of which 483 million were daily active users. That's a lot of children.