THE mother of two teenage daughters who took their own lives has backed calls for the controversial ask.fm website to be shut down.
Last week the father of Hannah Smith, 14, who was found dead in her bedroom on Friday August 2, said she had been "cyberbullied" on ask.fm. The question-and-answer site allows users to send messages to one another without their identity being disclosed.
Lorraine Gallagher -whose children Erin and Shannon killed themselves last year - said :"I don't want to go and see another child has killed themselves because of bullying on ask.fm.
"I just want someone to hold their hands up and say 'we got it wrong'."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
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We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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