Facebook Abuse: Is Blocking People Enough?
I didn’t think it would happen to me… but it has. This past week on Facebook, I was the victim of a slew of abuse from a very aggressive Facebook member.
I had a gut feeling about this character some time ago when we first friended. In a way, I’ve only myself to blame for having any interactions at all. I’d stepped in a couple times in the past on Facebook Notes to placate and defend other victims of this person’s abuse.
Of course it occurred to me I should unfriend and block this bully. But, truth is, I was concerned about a possible backlash I might trigger. This person seems to have some psychological challenges causing erratic behavior. One minute they seem pleasant and helpful, the next minute they turned into an attacking pitbull.
Everything came to a head when I saw a Note the bully wrote with personal assaults on a fine young professional contact of mine, and I felt compelled to step in and show my support for the innocent person. Sure enough, the backlash I feared came with a vengeance. I immediately unfriended and blocked this harasser.
[To block someone, click on the Privacy link at the very top or bottom of any Facebook page, and enter the name of the person you want to block (see screen-shot). This pulls up the possible profiles, from which you can identify and select the individual to block. You can also write to abuse [at] facebook.com, and you can use the Report feature on Notes and Groups.]
Turns out this same person has been banned from several other sites (including Facebook a few times, apparently!) and blocked by at least two prominent bloggers that I personally know. Yikes! Something is clearly wrong with the security of Facebook’s system if a banned person can keep showing up like the bad penny.
Now, let me just say, I’m always of the opinion that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I like to uplift, empower and praise people. I like to leave people feeling better about themselves after an interaction with me than before – whether in person, by email, on the phone, or my activities on Facebook.
Thing is, EVERYTHING on the internet could potentially be found by the public. By attacking other people, it says more about the attacker than it does their victims. And, every single time we write a blog post or a comment, or participate in activities in social networking sites – we not only reveal more of who we are and allow ourselves to be transparent, we may also leave ourselves vulnerable to having our postings used against us.
On that note, I’m eagerly awaiting Andy Beal’s new book Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online – due for publication on March 4, 2008.
My attacker is still out there spreading rubbish about me. And, I’m not sure that, inside Facebook, it’s possible (yet) to track postings about yourself from a person you’ve blocked. Blocking makes both parties practically invisible to each other. (I say practically, because I’m still seeing the occasional email in my Facebook Inbox from this harasser, in response to previous threads with multiple people).
Any suggestions? How can Facebook tighten up their system to prevent situations like this? Is it just a matter of Facebook members being vigilant about who they accept as friends? (After all, Mark Zuckerberg’s intent with Facebook is for members to stay connected with people they already know). Even so, there’s nothing to stop a “non-friend” from launching personal attacks. Ay-yi-yi… sure leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Caveat emptor.
Hi Mari;
So sorry to hear you had to deal with this airhead. Unfortunately. Why a person would waste an ongoing relationship with a widely read page such as yours is beyond me.
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Who can help me ACCOUNT ABUSE,.. has nothing to do with poker, but somebody has been writing a message to one of my friends over my account, how is that possible without having my password.
How can I find out and who has an address from FACEBOOK where I can report my problem to find out who did it ????
Thank you for your support !!!!!
I have had a similar problem after I criticised a nasty racist comment in a group. I blocked an individual who messaged me but they have spread malicious posts about me on the group discussion board. This was very recently and Facebook haven’t acted yet although I reported abuse.
I think we may be being harrassed by the same person, it sounds very similar to what i am going through on FB at the moment.
Please can you email me? I’d like to have a better chat about his with you.
Hi, I was searching about abuse on facebook, and I saw your article, I m dealing with the same situation. The abuser is using my identity, and trying to be me on facebook. He was using my old facebook account, spreading rubbish about me and sending my friends an unauthorized picture of me. Therefore, I terminated my account. But, now he has made a new account with my name and my picture. Seriously, I dont know how to stop this sick person. He has made his decision to ruin me. I wrote to yahoo that I ve been impersonated. I m still waiting for their response.
OMG, now I’m seeing rubbish by this same crackpot in the Twitter stream. Someone please DO something!!!
@Mike – see my other comment http://whyfacebook.com/2007/12/13/whats-your-friending-policy/#comment-70
Basically, Facebook blocking is for breach of TOS.
Why do they block so many accounts that are actually used?!
Hi Mari – one thing people can do is report a posting to Facebook if they feel it’s against the Facebook Terms of Service (TOS)…
I’m not sure how many it takes for FB to take it seriously, but I would expect they give priority to posts which trigger reports from several different people.
As for bullying there’s at least these 2 bullets in their TOS (as of Nov 15 2007) which are related to bullying but possibly others too:
* upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
* intimidate or harass another;
Hope that helps.
@Willa – for sure on the kind part… and transparency is a matter of choice and degree. For me, there’s a blurry line between my personal and professional lives because I’m self-employed and specialize in the world of relationships. But, I also have a private life and choose to draw the line there. 🙂
@Michael – good to see you here. I think taking a Facebook vacation is a good thing, actually! It’s a fabulous platform, but sure zaps energy when stuff like this happens!