The astonishing and controversial vandalism of tribute Facebook pages for Australian children who had been slain, might just have been avoided if only the users themselves, and not the networking website, had put in more efforts into monitoring and policing the site, as has been stressed by the Internet industry.

However, an ex-Director of safety at MySpace Australia has shared that the industry should be focusing on improvement of the content moderation processes, instead of trying to place the blame on users.

Last week, the largest social networking websites of Australia, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, met with the Internet Industry Association to carry out discussion, among other things, on the defacing of tribute Facebook pages for the two dead children from Australia.

The pages had been vandalized with obscene messages and pornographic content.

The problem was so grave that it led Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to remark that he was now seriously considering appointing an online ombudsman to take care of issues that arise out of social networking sites.