Amanda Todd, the 15-year-old Canadian girl found dead last week, was a victim -among other abuses and humiliations- of harmful and cruel tagging in the social network Facebook. She told the story herself in a heartbreaking video on YouTube five weeks ago detailing her battle with online harassment and bullies. Unable to bear the harassment, she committed suicide.

Everything started when she was 12; she flashed in front of her webcam for a stranger in a videochat session at BlogTV. He then threatened her with releasing the video and screenshots to all her acquaintances if she didn’t agree to provide him with more: he wanted an erotic show through the webcam. Amanda didn’t give in and the alleged pedophile fulfilled his threat. From there, a massive bullying campaign began both in and out of the Internet, which continues even now after her death. People used Facebook’s tagging feature to make fun of her; when she tried to kill herself by drinking bleach after suffering a beating outside her school, they tagged different bottles of bleach with her name. If social networks like Facebook didn’t allow tagging without affected user’s permission, this kind of harassment would have been closed and publishing humiliating images associated with our name wouldn’t be possible.

According to Canadian authorities, whoever participated in this kind of actions could be charged with an offense of harassment.

Because of this, and to avoid many other problems, from FriendlyScreens we promote this campaign, and we demand strongly: NO TAGS without permission!