Facebook's ongoing effort to solicit user feedback reached a bizarre low over the weekend. As reported by The Guardian, the social network included a question in a survey that allowed responders to indicate that FB should allow illegal, sexualized content from teenagers on the platform.

A screengrab clarified the exact phrasing of two questions, and these appear to combine stock question templates with a controversial phrase: "a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures." The first asked how users thought Facebook should respond to such a scenario, and it included positive-sounding answers such as, "this content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it."

The second question asked "who should be deciding the rules" on that kind of content appearing on Facebook, and its answers included, "Facebook decides the rules on its own," "external experts decide the rules and tell Facebook," and "users decide the rules by voting and telling Facebook."

As Guardian reporter Alex Hern pointed out, no question in the survey included an option of contacting or referring a case to law enforcement. The survey was received by Guardian editor Jonathan Haynes, and UK law forbids the solicitation of nude or sexualized images from "a child," which is anyone under the age of 18.

Facebook's survey push on this angle of online communication is curious for two reasons. First, the UK law in question was notoriously upheld in being both signed in to the public record and enforced. Second, Facebook introduced a new Messenger Kids app for iOS users only in December, which is designed to let users ages 13 and younger communicate on the platform exclusively with friends and peers of whom parents expressly approve.

Additional questions in the Sunday survey, according to The Guardian, asked users' thoughts on "glorifying extremism" and on the service's "transparency" and understanding of "cultural norms" in developing policies.

Facebook Vice President of Product Guy Rosen tweeted a response about the survey on Sunday, telling Haynes, "We run surveys to understand how the community thinks about how we set policies. But this kind of activity is and will always be completely unacceptable on FB. We regularly work with authorities if identified. It shouldn't have been part of this survey. That was a mistake."

The company offered an additional statement: "We understand this survey refers to offensive content that is already prohibited on Facebook and that we have no intention of allowing so have stopped the survey. We have prohibited child grooming on Facebook since our earliest days; we have no intention of changing this, and we regularly work with the police to ensure that anyone found acting in such a way is brought to justice."