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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."
not to use facebook. This can have some SERIOUS consequences for people working in the defence industry where security is well known to have a humor level of 0.
If your "friends" refuse to respect your request, then they're not really your friends. If they're not really a friend, why are they a "friend"?
Facebook to users: We give you tools with which to communicate with people you trust. If you don't trust them, don't allow them to use those tools with you.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
If you have a friend that is adding you to Groups you do not want to belong to
That's how it works?
So, instead of inviting someone to join the group, you can just add them?
Dumb fucks.
I swear this is the standard response of any designer confronted, suddenly, with gaps in their thinking. "It can't be a serious problem, there is a workaround!"
What's wrong with the National Association of Marlon Brando Look-Alikes?
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
I used to only have one friend, my mother. To prevent being added to a bad group I had to unfriend her. Now she's yelling at me to come up out of the basement and explain myself...
Facebook Groups subscribe you!
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Why the hell would an option to do something like this even be added. I can see an invite system offering the ability to accept or deny an invite but being able to add someone automatically? Damn it was bad enough when my friends and I used to have junk mail wars and see who could get who on the worst mailing lists. This only ended when someone sent baby product catalogs to the wife of friend who was having trouble getting pregnant. I'm kind of surprised that guy survived. Perfect example of why this is a bad idea....someone always goes too far. Let's face it NAMBLA is pretty damn offensive.
So "friends" can automatically add you to a group? That sounds like a HUGE security and privacy hole. I could certainly see friends "suggesting" groups to you to join, but to give them default ability to add you to a group is just WAY beyond belief.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Because in the meantime if you haven't mastered Facebook's privacy settings a stranger might think you actually belong to those groups. Which isn't a problem until said stranger is in the position of offering or not offering you a job. Or deciding whether to do a more thorough investigation prior to a lawsuit or charges being filed.
Why worry about why? When you say it's a non issue, you're factually entirely wrong. It's an issue to them and their request is a relatively simple one ... allow a preference to disallow friends to make you join groups.
The oddity to this is that they already have an approval mechanism -- it's evident when they say that if you leave a group that someone has added you to, you cannot be re-added without authorization. That makes it pretty clear to me that it would be trivial to make that setting a default, but they don't want to.
Anyone care to start making a bot that automatically joins and then leaves groups as they are detected?
While I think facebook has a callous disregard for privacy in general, their suggestion that you simply un-friend someone who plops you into a group is spot-on.
Membership in a group really just means that your name will appear in their roster. No one will have additional access to your personal information. If you find it annoying that you have to remove yourself from a group you don't want to be in, just remove the friend who put you there along with it.
Facebook has long needed better "friend" vs. "acquaintance" handling; i.e. you can share more with your inner circle than with the person you met once and say Hi to about every 6 months. Maybe this ruffle will be the push they need to get cracking on that feature.
Yeah, no need to fix the lock; you can totally call the cops on any burglar who gets into your home. Every time.
you are offering the absurd choice: trust your friends with everything or have no friends
no, i want friends, and i want to decide how much i trust each one. am i asking too much?
your understanding of what friendship means is crude and useless
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I do have an account af Facebook but I really don't use it much. But if is is like anything round here, there may be lots of people who have lots of friends that they don't really know - I for sure know I have an awful lot of friends requests from people I've never seen. It is quite hard if you have a thousand of friends to track them all. So you go to sleep one night and the next morning you wake up to find out you've been added to a hate-speech, or a pro-taleban group, a neo-nazi group (which is actually a criminal offense in some countries) or something like that. It is an inherently flawed concept. Of course you may always argue you never actually joined that group, but we live in a world where appearances count more than evidence.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
I'd have a different request. Remove the "feature" that lets friends automatically put you in groups and replace it with the standard invite scheme. If they really want they can add a preference (defaulting to off) to automatically accept these invites.
. . . I knew not having any friends would pay off in the long run! Suckers!
Facebook can't be this stupid.
A friend should be able to SUGGEST that you join a group-- TO YOU so you make the decision.
I wasn't aware this was even a feature of facebook. So there is no way to disable this short of unfriending the person? (and then it's still on my record as being part of that group anyway!)
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
hey, we should, like, totally form a social group for people who aren't on facebook. Here, I'll pencil you in...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Which isn't a problem until said stranger is in the position of offering or not offering you a job.
We all do dumb shit, including that recruiter. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up to realizing that just because you post status updates about being drunk from time to time does not mean that everyone else don't get drunk (and make some bad decisions while drunk) occasionally too.
Omnes stulti sunt.
Bingo! Give that man a ceegar! Only YOU should have the power to join a group PERIOD. This sounds like the guys at FB simply refusing to admit a feature is a "Bad Idea" and ignoring their users. I personally hope with all the asshattery FB has been pulling they will go the way of MySpace and another will come along that actually listens to their users. Sadly there are simply too many out there that use FB as an accurate source of info, even though it makes wikipedia look like encyclopedia britannica.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Great idea, until someone else registers a profile using your name and an old photo of you.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I decided to be uncool and stay out of Facebook.
That's okay, your friends* created an account for you.
* If you don't have any friends, read "enemies".
-- Alastair
http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=joe+lipari&edition=techdirt
Hopefully Facebook will fix this. In the meantime, or if they don't, I suggest someone start a group for, "Obnoxious Friends that Add Their Friends to Controversial Groups," group. Then, every time someone adds you to a stupid group, you add them to that group. Recursion and drama ensues. Nobody can take Facebook groups seriously ever again...Of course, the fact that they did in the first place is just too bad.
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