Facebook: The Cops, The Cults, the Harassment

By TRB

For a growing number of people, when they think of internet harassment, they think of Facebook, the social networking system that seems to believe that the Federal guidelines for internet harassment don't apply to them. Further, Facebook is loaded down with police agencies, so if you are looking for a true social networking experience you might want to first leave the police station. Thirdly, Facebook, although it demands perfect behavior within Facebook guidelines for its smaller users (anyone with less than 1000 friends), it actually allows some Facebook groups to forget the guidelines.

There is, for example a Startrek cult-like organization on Facebook, probably one of many. One of the leaders of this particular 1039 member Facebook cell is a man calling himself Derick Merlin Wildstar (Black Tiger). On his Facebook page you will find his various anti-social sentiments including this which looked permanently printed, not something he just wrote across his page for the day: "I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops, spics, greasers or camel jockies," he assures the reader, explaining just how open-minded he is. Ninty percent of the descriptions he uses to explain how he lives his life are worded in profanities that I can not repeat here.

And yet here is Facebook, spending most of its time harassing Facebook friends who don't make their 1000 limit. Apparently, once that figure is reached it makes the 1000 group more attractive to Facebook advertisers. When you look at this "Starfleet" group, you can't help but wonder how many others are out there like it. My guess is that in a world this large that figure is probaly substantial. It would be interesting to know, Does Facebook itself have any idea?

Just yesterday Facebook was paticipating in harassment of its smaller page holders. You see, I am one of those. I have maybe 135 people and I don't want much more. I came on Facebook just to meet new people and to listen to music, something Facebook assures prospective users it can do. It does not tell the user (until he or she is there) that they are expected to bring into this Facebook world virtually their entire family and their friends too, right down to the friends you have at work and your former high school buddies.And from them they also want as much personal information as they can get and all of their friends and relatives.

In fact, most Facebookers will tell you, the less personal information you give the more they will harass you. Just recently they harassed me by having everyone's messages delivered to my page. Messages usually go to each individual member's page. They might decide to abruptly erase a message you have written. They may make you sign in four to five times.They might suspend you from attaining new page members because they either don't like that you are seeking strangers - which many people do - for their page, a sort of "going off the Facebook reservation of family and old friends."

What Faceboook does not seem to know is that word on the street casts them as bullies, who say one thing, do another, and apply the rules as they see fit, with or without evidence. In this way, in the amount of screw ups, Facebook has become a "beat" if you are a reporter. Good people are getting played by this corporation, which insanely portrays itself as "liberal," And it is causing many of them to raise the important question. "Why the hell am I on Facebook? Seriously, all you are doing is providing free entertainment for the atmosphere in which Facebook sells ad space, They don't give you a nickel for it. But they will harass you any time they feel like it.

Did you know a lot of cops hung out on Facebook? Well they do. Facebook probably won't tell you how many or from which police agency. I knew a woman on Facebook who was probably a cop. Then she might have been a guy who was playing a dead woman who might have been a cop, See, isn't Facebook fun?

Let me try to explain the secrets of Molly Jean Huffins (her real last name is more likely Huffines). She came onto the page mixed in with a group of nice people, mostly models. She looked like a model, at least the photos of herself did. She was always doing or saying something a little off-beat on the page, and we developed a friendship, which we both acknowledged just before she disappeared. In fact, that very night.

I was on the home page, the page everyone actually hangs out on when I saw her avatar,which is supposed to be a photo of herself. From its lips sprang the words "I'm concerned." That no sooner happened and a text box opened next to her asking, "Are you alright, Holly?" I clicked on the textbox which gave me a look at the person asking the question. It was a young attractive woman with FBI medallions and plaques hanging on the walls of her office. It was someone from the FBI. Was Molly from the FBI?

Within ten minutes of Molly uttering the words "I'm concerned" she was gone. Off Facebook. She didn't say goodbye to any friends. She just disappeared. This same Holly used to put out traps on Facebook.These are things enticing you to enter them to learn something. Only when you get inside them, even though you've been reduced to a cursor on the page, some people become extremely claustrophobic. Some, who suffer from panic disorders, have described heart palpitations in these situations, which Facebook does all the time. The fact that the experience actually does cause harm to some people, does not deter them at Facebook,

So why do they do this? To ask you (it is presented in the form of an almost police-like demand) even more personal questions? So you can become even more valuable to marketers. Sure you can get out of this box, but if you are new to the experience of Facebook it could take a while, long enough for you to get what they want, or actually cause you harm.

Another thing Holly would do is every day she would set up at least two things on the main page. One would be a photo of Holly stating what percentage of beaufiful she was on that day. The beauty was never based on her looks. It was based on how many friends she got, friends that she knew, family members, whether she had given up even more personal information about herself. This is how you are judged if you want to be on Facebook. In other words, they judge you using criteria at least half of which is none of their business. You play the Facebook puppet and they make the advertising dollars, and all the while they harass you any time they want, which might be in direct conflict of Federal Law.

The other thing Holly did was a digitized prop she would drag out on the main floor.It was supposed to find your "female vampire." For alI I know it might have been just another trap. Holly seemed to have developed that kind of dishonesty that justifies itself based on other falsehoods, a circle without integrity. This I thought was a shame because she (he) otherwise seemed like a good person.

The Facebook experience is being mismanaged by the corporation, which could mean, as unlikely as this may sound at the moment, that Facebook could eventually go the way of other computer social networks. There are some things it has to stop doing or it won't last. Facebook should weed out the cults, especially the racist cults. This might mean that they should spend more of their security budget on things that might actually permanently damage the company if they are not stopped.

Facebook should stop harassing their own customers. It is bad business. And anyone who doesn't understand that, has no concept of memory. People don't forget when they have been harassed. They tell other people. And those people tell other people. And those people tell still other people.

Send some of the cops back out on the street. Has Facebook suddenly become a house of crime?

And last but not least, you could leave me alone.

Oh, and before i forget, "Goodbye Molly Jean Huffins," or Huffines or whatever.