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Lighthearted Facebook Friends Could Make You Join NAMBLA Group
mykos writes "The Facebook groups feature is causing bit of a stir with its users. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington was allegedly added to a group about NAMBLA, and in turn, he added Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It's all in good (albeit tasteless) fun, except when a harmless joke goes awry and you find yourself being detained by customs when a friend decided to drag you into a mock terrorist group. Facebook representatives are aware of the matter, but are dismissive of it. A Facebook spokeswoman said, 'If you have a friend that is adding you to Groups you do not want to belong to, or they are behaving in a way that bothers you, you can tell them to stop doing it, block them or remove them as a friend — and they will no longer EVER have the ability to add you to any Group.' In somewhat related news, guillotines ensure you won't have dandruff on your shoulders anymore."
It's almost as if Facebook is a gigantic sociological test lab. The idea is to make the whole thing incrementally more ridiculous and obnoxious, and then measure how far you can push people before they quit.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Happens a lot, not always with evil intent but ends up that way. Two of my coworkers have set up a sock puppet facebook account for a third coworker who is a relative technophobe but had recently acquired an iPhone. They found immense humor in his having the iPhone and felt that "facebook was the next logical step". They invited a lot of his friends, and made routine posts about his life that were factual although somewhat snarky. Anyone who knows the guy personally knew instantly that he wasn't operating the account. It was all in good fun, until someone posted something that was considered company confidential (by a petty piece of shit manager whose IQ may or may not exceed that of a 2x4). That got reported to the boss of the victimized coworker, said coworker of course has no idea what's going on, it stopped being funny at that point. The perpetrators did come forth and submit to their flogging, fortunately, but I can easily see facebook being damaging even if you avoid it.