> From that list of 40 or 50 people, it was easy to find and trawl their social media. And that is when they found a photo of Lucy on Facebook with an adult who looked as though she was close to the girl - possibly a relative.

It sounds like Facebook was a huge boost to the investigation despite that.

▲

defrost 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Facebook did nothing to assist in narrowing a search area.

What Facebook actually did was host images .. so that after the team narrowed a list down to under 100 people they could look through profiles by hand.

It may as well have been searching Flickr, Instagram, Etsy, etc. profiles by hand.

▲

garbawarb 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, and if Facebook didn't exist, presumably these images connecting the abuser to the victim wouldn't have been available anywhere for the investigators to find.

	▲	jmye 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If Facebook didn’t exist, they would’ve found the photos on MySpace. Come on. All Facebook likely did here that was any different than any other social media platform would have done, was gather Sandberg, Zuck and a cadre of snotty, sniveling engineers in a conference room and debate whether this was good engagement for the platform.