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Germany Considers Banning Wild Facebook Parties
An anonymous reader writes "Wild Facebook parties tend to occur when a Facebook Event invitation to a typical small gathering is mistakenly posted publicly, and then goes viral. This results in injuries and arrests as hundreds or even thousands show up for a party meant for a handful of people. A recent wave of these out-of-control Facebook parties has left German officials and politicians trying to figure how to deal with the trend."
....Germany would already have laws in place for out-of-control parties.
What's next? Banning cars to stop drunk driving? Go after the people who create a public disturbance, if necessary.
...they called it the Arab spring...
FCKGW 09F9 42
"has left German officials and politicians trying to figure how to deal with the trend."
How about teaching people not to be incompetent with their privacy settings?
Ban politicians from making ridiculous unenforceable bans.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Really, I hate FB as much as the next poster, but how is this a Facebook problem? Didn't happened before Facebook? -- Happens the same here every time a girl meets some random guy thanks to facebook $crime_happens and everyone blames Facebook.
Anyway.. those must be some hardcore parties there (cue references to German porn)
... People hanging out. Oh the horror. Please gov'ment... save us.
About eighty years ago there was another rogue party in Germany also caused by a book that went viral and got out of control. Most of the whole county ended up joining and it caused a lot of arrests and damage, even some deaths too. About time they did something about it.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Germans LOVE David Hasselhoff.
Why does anyone even go to these parties? Isn't it common sense that 800 people can't all be in a small residential home all at once?
It's no different from slapping "Open Party" banners on signposts and having 5,000 people turn up - I'm pretty sure the police would hold you responsible for the turnout and any resulting carnage.
As such, why not make the host responsible for posting an open party invite? A few hefty fines for likely convince people to make events private unless they really mean it.
Facebook should also do more to encourage private events... but that's another story.
Dear German Authorities,
Send a bill for damages and legal costs to anyone too stupid to figure out how to set their event privacy settings to something other than 'everyone'. After the first few college kids see their lives vaporize into a black sucking hole of wage garnishments and crappy housing options, they'll cry and moan about it on facebook, thus solving your problem. That's how we do it here, and it's worked out pretty well for us so far.
Sincerely,
Some Bitchy American
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
they're just mad because they never get invited.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This seems to be a symptom of Facebook's lax security policies, more than anything else. By default, just about anything you ever post or do on Facebook should be restricted to authorized people (e.g., friends or even smaller groups). Posting something that is visible to the internet or to large numbers of people should be difficult unless you've explicitly tailored your settings to be more public than the defaults.
But, of course, Facebook wants everything to be as public as possible.
Politicians in TFA are proposing things like "internet drivers licenses." What about just saying -- Facebook, put in reasonable privacy protections and reasonable defaults, or get the f*** out of our country?
They're going to ban people from mistakenly posting something public?
This is more about smart people who are well meaning that go to far to protect other people. That is the slippery slope folks. The only human behavior you can know is that of yourself and any opinion as to how others will behave is a comment on yourself - that is unless you are a scientist. Are legislature full of dumbass neighbors? I think it is time to revoke Jesus thinking and attack neighbors that would create legislation to control neighbors. If people mistakenly post their party publicly, that is too bad. Laws ain't going to fix mistakes.
This has nothing to do with facebook parties. There is an ongoing conflict between the current political caste and the internet community. Since the politicians managed to antagonize nearly all net activists with a law about net blocks (which never went into effect), the net has now become a dangerous mine field for politicians.
A net initiative toppled lately several high ranking politicians who have been discovered to have cut&pasted their PHD thesis. Among them was the secretary of defense who was a media darling and earmarked to become the next conservative chancellor (candidate).
Facebook parties are no real problem (i heard about 4 instances which became problematic in the last 24 months, about half of them have been unintentionally). So such a law will have no effect, especially since current laws already cover the area.
But it is a great opportunity for politicians to designate the internet as source of evil and to demonstrate their boldness by stepping forward and putting an end to it.
CU, Martin
Wild Facebook parties tend to occur when a Facebook Event invitation to a typical small gathering is mistakenly posted publicly, and then goes viral.
This effect shall herefore be known as 'blitzkeg'.
I know more than you drink.
It occurred to me that, as a Canadian, all I really had to say was "damn, did people really need to get hurt?".
Those silly Germans, always taking things to the extreme, they do.
The Irony I posted an open orgy and no one came...
How hard would it be for Facebook to do some elementary background check on a submission, and put up a warning for any public event of the "Do you really mean to do that" variety? For all the bloviating above, the moral of this story is that Facebook actually has some piss-poor programming practices. It's only beginners who don't validate and sanity check user input. Who is reviewing this stuff at Facebook? Anyone over 30?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Some politicians try to improve their ratings among their voters by shouting around a little bit.
The suggestions are mostly laughed at, and even their political friends usually are not impressed.
A law against a more or less spontaneous party of many persons with "nobody" in charge (or somebody who unintentionally invited the people) will be difficult to forbid.
For anything else (commercial events, political demonstrations etc.) there are rules already.
Germans are allowed to assemble in public (paragraph 22 of the German constitution), but for an *organized meeting* the organizer must ask for a permission *for a specific place* first (if you don't get the permission, you can sue for it to check whether the right to assemble was violated).
Simplest solution?
If the 'reveal' is misuse, charge the people holding the party for the FULL cost of the event, and hold them (as any party-holder would be) legally responsible for the consequences of the party.
If the revelation was through a technical flaw in the social software, hold Facebook (or whomever) responsible.
One can't idiot-proof the world, only establish chains of causality and let people/companies respond to the incentives/disincentives that exist.
-Styopa
They *do* know how to party! Remember those flash mob parties in Nuremberg?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2VpNqqBdGg
Ja?
Ja!