Ask.FM founders defend website amid calls to shut down

The founders of ask.fm, a social networking site with 60 million users, have defended the social networking site where teenager Hannah Smith was bullied before taking her own life.

Bosses Mark and Ilja Terebin of the Latvia-based website ask.fm said they were committed to providing a "safe environment" for their users and wanted to reassure them and their parents.

They also said: "We do not condone bullying of any kind, or any form of unacceptable use of our site."

Hannah's father, Dave Smith, has called for the website's owners to be charged with manslaughter.

The 14-year-old girl from Lutterworth, Leicestershire, took her own life on Friday after repeated messages encouraging her to kill herself and criticising her appearance.

The founders' statement comes as firms including Vodafone, Phones 4u, Specsavers, Laura Ashley, DialAFlight and Universelook as well as charities Mind and Save The Children pulled their advertising amid "deep concerns over cyber bullying". 

Ask.fm allows users to post anonymous questions and messages but has been criticised for not doing enough after several other teenagers took their lives - apparently after receiving abuse on the site.

Ask.fm has called her death a "true tragedy" and said it is co-operating with Leicestershire Police's investigation.

In the latest statement, the founders said they also wanted to highlight a number of existing "safety" features available for its users.

They said these included an 'in-question' reporting function, in place since 2012, and similar to the in-Tweet function announced by Twitter this week.

"This feature enables our users to report with just one click any question that they may find objectionable or offensive."

The bosses added they have a team of moderators working around the clock who manually check every photograph or video posted to the site, so anything of a sexual, pornographic or violent nature is removed.

"Our moderators also read and deal appropriately with every concern or report that is raised by a user; we remove content if we feel it infringes our Terms of Service."

They added: "Although it is possible to post anonymously to the site, we would like to reassure parents that in almost all cases it is possible for ask.fm to identify users - through IP technology."