Finally, Facebook unfriends pedophiles

It took more than three years, but Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has finally developed a conscience.

The social media company, founded by the hoodie-wearing tech billionaire, is suddenly on the right side of the law when it comes to pedophiles and other assorted perverts.

Hey, welcome to the human race, Mark!

Last week New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that his office agreed to a partnership with Facebook “to use innovative data and analytical methods to crack down on human trafficking.”

A source in the AG’s office tells me that once New York and Facebook get the computer algorithms needed to identify kids listed in online sex ads, they will share the technology with other states and the federal government.

“One goal is to try to identify children featured in these ads — with an emphasis on missing children,” according to my source, who has asked not to be identified.

Back in August 2012, I launched my personal crusade against Facebook, which then was just looking the other way as sexual miscreants were using its pages to share photos of underage kids for their own deviant pleasures.

It started when I became aware of a page someone on Facebook had posted under the title “Pedophiles are People too.”

As I wrote then: “At the top of the page is a close-up shot of a very young girl walking alone down an alleyway. In the distant background is a blurry picture of a man with an open trench coat. His hands are in his pockets.”

I figured this would be an easy fix. I’d call Facebook and they would act mortified — and the page would come down. But that’s not what happened. Facebook said that because there was no explicit nudity or sex on that page, it would be allowed to remain.

What?!

By the time this page was pointed out to me, there had already been 21 people who “liked” it, and hundreds had had pro-pedophilia conversations.

Soon after Facebook showed a very obvious lack of concern, I called up companies that advertised on the site. Eventually the page was taken down.

But that wasn’t Facebook’s only problem, as I pointed out in a long series of columns that stretched through May 2014.

Facebook’s pages were also being used — sources around the world told me back then — as a wee-hours-of-the-morning gathering place for pedophiles and others seeking illegal sex.

They’d share “jokes” and trade pictures. One comment that stayed up on Facebook for a long time was “You know you [sic] skilled when you can fit 10 kids in 1 self storage [room].”

And the perverts would be gone before Facebook’s antiquated policing methods could spot them.

But the company still didn’t seem to care.

Now Facebook finally seems to be dedicating time, money and effort into getting technologically ahead of the bad guys.

What can I say — nice going, Mark.

But how many kids might you have saved in the three years you dawdled since the problem was first brought to your attention?

I’d like to think I loosened the cap for Schneiderman. At the very least, I have a clear conscience.

There is, I hear, a push by some to forgive student loans.

And once that gets done, I’m sure someone will start lobbying for other loans to be torn up.

Mortgages and home loans? They are so burdensome and are causing people not to procreate, not to travel and — basically — to not have a good time. Get rid of them.

Medical bills? Chuck ’em, unless of course they are for cosmetic procedures. Car loans? They are also such a nuisance, aren’t they?

People who made the wrong financial choices should all be forgiven. Isn’t that what America is all about?

OK, let me say it straight out: I’m being sarcastic.

If you borrow, you should pay it back — unless, of course, you are Donald Trump using corporate bankruptcy laws in a clever way. That’s all right — because, well, he is The Donald and because he’ll yell at you if you say anything bad about him.

But back to student loans.

A new report from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), a think tank with no political affiliation, says, “If blanket [student] loan forgiveness were declared in the next decade, taxpayers would bear an immediate budget hit of $1 trillion to $4 trillion depending on the loans outstanding at the time of implementation.”

The SSRN says the costs of the government student-loan program, which has outstanding loans of $1.3 trillion and has grown by an average of 15 percent a year for more than a decade, has been “enormously distorted by the Department of Education and Congressional Budget Office.”

How much distortion?

The government says its student loan portfolio will make a profit of $135 billion for the period of 2015 to 2024.

SSRN says if Generally Accepted Accounting Principles were used, the government would actually have a loss of $1.9 trillion.

Jeez, that seems like a pretty big discrepancy. Could someone in Washington be trying to hide the truth? Nah, they wouldn’t do that.