Reports from the Guardian and the Global Dashboard claim that Facebook threatened to sue Daily Mail. This is due to an article that wrongfully claimed that the social network giant makes it easier for older sex predators to seduce and approach minors.

The article was written by Mark Williams-Thomas, a former police detective. His original title for the said article was “I Posed as a Girl of 14 on Facebook. What Followed Will Sicken You”. The writer talked about his experience when he posed as a minor on Facebook and how he was able to attract sexual predators immediately.

The real issue was that the author was not using Facebook in his experiment and in truth was using a different social networking site. The article was updated at the bottom by the Daily Mail staff. The full text of the update goes this way:

“In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.”

The article had caused a strong response from Facebook. According to the Guardian, a UK spokeswoman for Facebook said that the company was considering taking legal actions as the article has damaged its reputation. Aside from the erroneous reporting, Facebook do not accept members below 18 years old and has measures already in place to prevent that kind of behavior from taking place.