How to not be a Jerk on Facebook

You’ve seen them all: “WARNING Facebook is going to charge for the use,” “WARNING Facebook privacy blahdiblah,” “I declare that Facebook should pay me and give me a pet unicorn,” etc.  They are all ((Almost all.)) false.  Before, you start forwarding alarmist or “charitable” messages, ask yourself two questions:

  1. Does this seem plausible?
  2. Am I so gullible, I am going to follow step-by-step instructions from some random person on the internet without understanding them?

If you can answer yes to both, be a jerk and hit share.  Otherwise, read on.

Use Snopes

Snopes is a web-site collecting and classifying stories according to their truth.  They do in fact have an entire section devoted to Facebook, but also general urban legends making their way on Facebook and elsewhere can always be found there.  Also, it is often an amusing read.

It is easy to check a scam on Snopes; the easier way is to go to Google, type in “snopes” and then copy/paste then entire story.  Most likely that will yield a first hit on Snopes which will tell you the story is bullshit.  For the more advanced user, select a couple key words and type them along with “snopes” into Google and do the same.

Abraham-Lincoln-QuotesNow, I just mentioned you should not not mindlessly follow instructions, right?  Why trust Snopes more than average internet person #46829602?  You shouldn’t, but Snopes has something average internet person doesn’t.  Snopes has references.  Whenever Snopes makes a claim, it is founded in statements from experts, who have done research.  They provide links to the original messages.  Don’t believe random internet person just because there’s a textual reference, because those can be faked.

Use Common Sense

I’ll admit that using Snopes whenever some jerk shares the urban legend of the week may be a lot of work.  Luckily, using a bit of common sense you can debunk most of these easily.  Here’s a couple common types and why they are obviously false.  Most of the time, you can be sure that if a post ends with “share this with your friends” it is a fake.

Facebook Privacy Claim #13860

Facebook has very sophisticated privacy settings.  You can set them up to be fairly tight.  The default is quite loose, though, so by default you share a lot of information.  You can go thru the settings and tighten them, but that is complicated and requires a lot of knowledge of what you are doing.

In general that does not matter, though.  Why should anybody care enough about you to want to snoop thru your private information?  You are nobody!  Facebook has 500 million users, why would anybody care about you?  True, marketers will trawl thru your information to provide targeted ads, but is that really so bad?  I’d rather have my adblocker block an ad about Britney spears merchandise than one about adult diapers or shampoo.  Also, yes, police and insurance companies will look at the information to detect fraud, but this is easily circumvented by not committing fraud (or at least have enough of a brain not to brag about it on Facebook).  Also, yes, criminals will go thru your information to see if you are away, but would you announce with a big sign on your front yard that you were leaving and everything is up for grabs?

Ok, if you’re famous and rich, people may want to single you out.  If you are dumb enough to broadcast whenever you kill a beggar or leave for vacation, you may want to tighten your security.  There’s plenty of guides on doing that, and Facebook is making it easier.  If you still cannot do it on your own, bribe your local nerd to do it for you.  Wouldn’t you trust your local nerd more than random internet person #79205479?

So, if you have any privacy problems on Facebook, remember they are called your problems for a reason.  Sharing them with everybody else will not solve anything.  There have been privacy issues on Facebook, but they are resolved very swiftly, and are only important for Mark Zuckerberg and Britney Spears, because – remember – nobody cares about you.

Facebook is Going to Charge for Blahdiblah

Unless you are a business, no they are not!  You are not a Facebook customer, and everybody but you know it.  You are the product Facebook is selling.  Why would they try to scare away their product?  That’s like a farmer putting a fox in the poultry run.

Facebook wants you to publish as much as possible, because when you do, you read ads.  They want you to interact with friends and companies; every share tells Facebook more about you and allows them to better target ads.  Facebook is never going to charge you to post content, because they want you to post content.

Facebook’s entire business model is centered around having companies and people pay to have other people see their content.  Yes, your brilliant status update describing the color and texture from the day-later remains of your chilli dinner last night is not going to reach all your friends.  It’s going to reach those you interact the most with.  Similarly, a company page on Facebook does not reach all users (I typically see reach percentages of around 15%-20% for my page updates).  A company can pay to make an update more visible, though.  It will then show up as a sponsored link, reaching more people and maybe even friends of people liking their page.  Annoying?  Maybe, but “if you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold”.  Accept that or build your own social network with hookers and blackjack, or use one of the paid social networks (e.g., I’m on app.net – no ads, but not really anybody to interact with either).

Share this Status/Picture and Magical Company XYZ will Donate to Charity/Send You a Free iPhone/Enter You in a Competition

This is mostly, but not necessarily false.  There is one kind of competition, that can be true.  If a reputable company has a competition to like or share an image or status and you do it, it may be true.  Note that sometimes the companies cheat, and you will be spamming your friends.  If that is ok with you, feel free to join those competitions/draws/charities.  People can always block shares from you if you overdo it and they get annoyed, so maybe only do it if you really want that price…

The ones, where somebody posts along the lines of “Company XYZ will donate to anybody sharing or posting this image” are invariably false.  The company cannot measure this!  This is also true for sharing this picture of an ugly kid to get it an operation to have less cancer.  If the competition/charity/giveaway is not posted by a company on their official page, it is fake.  Sharing a real competition is annying but at least you have a change for monetary reward in exchange for your soon-to-be-ex-friends; with the false versions you don’t even have that sweet-sweet chance of winning a 1.5% discount card for Rubble-and-Cardboard’R’Us.

Share This with Your Friends to Spread the Word

Actually, don’t spread this.  I have nothing to gain from you doing so.  I have no ads on the page and I do not need to get my internet ego stroked by you spreading this.

I’m going to post it once to my stream and then as a comment whenever anybody violates the above.  I’m doing so in the hope that my Facebook friends will be a bit better educated and stop spreading the spam, making my feed more open to real advertisement that is easy to block and – what Facebook is really all about – people sharing how their bowel movements were this morning.

You do whatever you want – if your friends continue spamming you, remember: they are called your problems for a reason.

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