Mxit is mulling its legal options after news reports carried by etv and the Independent Group of newspapers “unfairly labelled it as being responsible for a schoolgirl's disappearance”, says CEO Herman Heunis.
Johannesburg daily newspaper The Star, part of the Independent Group, carried reports that a pupil from that city's Parktown Girls' High School disappeared after meeting someone on the instant messaging service.
The articles labelled 14-year-old Nabeela Omar as the “Mxit girl”. She returned to her family 48 hours after disappearing. Free-to-air television station etv also carried the story.
The school is considering disciplinary action following the girl's return. Although the case is being investigated, there is no proof that a conversation with an unknown person on Mxit led to the girl's disappearance.
Heunis was due to meet with his legal advisors yesterday to consider what steps can be taken; however, he refused to elaborate further.
Mxit's standpoint is that the reports may be considered defamatory and may be in breach of the SA Press Code. The service sent out a message late last week to 10 million logged-in users explaining its standpoint.
Mxit has also contacted Parktown Girls' High School, and a company representative will speak to both teachers and students about responsible social networking next week.
“We are tired of Mxit's name being misused by the media like this and it is damaging our brand,” he notes.
Heunis says the instant messaging service has done much more than its competitors to encourage responsible use. This includes having moderators monitor its chat rooms for the past 18 months, he explains.
“We are not a censorship organisation, but we do have structures in place to monitor and we encourage proper use and behaviour. However, the final responsibility rests with the end-user.”
Heunis says the only reason he can think of for the alleged misreporting is that the major media companies are worried Mxit will impact on their classified advertising revenue, as the instant messaging service carries more and more advertising of this nature.
Juan du Toit, Mxit's international marketing manager, says: “Our users send approximately 35 000 messages per second during peak times and the Mxit community visits our platform more than 20 million times a day. Even if it does emerge that she accepted a friend request from a stranger, it is not fair to condemn a technology of close to 15 million users for bad choices made by one user.”
Du Toit says that when etv was covering Omar's disappearance during its newscast, at 7pm, on Wednesday, 5 August, the station flashed a Web address for a European teen pornography site during the newscaster's report.
“This is simply unacceptable. There is no connection between Mxit and these sites, and we are horrified that prime time news would even show a Web address of this nature. Our philosophy is firm - we never promote or distribute any content that reflects any political, religious or pornographic view, and even restrict advertising from popular consumer magazines that could be seen as even slightly 'risqu'e'. Etv's actions were inappropriate and unethical,” he says.
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