Social Media Misuse

Balmed Out · 15-01-2016 12:49PM #1

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/facebook-images-of-young-cork-girls-posted-on-porn-site-376096.html

Basically someone set up a fake facebook page, befriended a lot of girls, downloaded all their photos and then posted them on some porn site.

I was talking to two girls who are friends with some of the victims. One of these two has more then 5000 friends and the other a little less but still a few thousand. They accept friend requests based on nothing more then having friends in common so even though they have all the privacy settings its not worth anything.

As a relatively new company which has expanded massively its perhaps understandable that Facebook might not have its act together to properly guard against misuse and im not sure what they could do but one thing that surprised me is that as both these girls have gotten older they have become aware that having so many 'friends' may not be the best idea but not wanting to delete their profiles and start again apparently there's no way of removing multiple friends at the same time so they don't bother.

Obviously parents need to do more to monitor and guard against misuse but given many of them are computer illiterate or too busy posting pictures of the kids themselves what should facebook do? What should lawmakers do?

Id suggest removing the option of having personal profiles visible to non friends, a second tier of friendship for acquaintances and a limited number of full friends who can see photos etc as well as the ability to remove multiple friends easily.

What do you think yourself am I being too nannystatish ?

biko · 15-01-2016 12:53PM

I only am friends on FB with people that I have actually met IRL and want to be connected with.
So muppets on FB isn't really an issue for me.

Balmed Out · 15-01-2016 12:55PM

Yeah less then 200 myself but its people a lot younger then you or I that are leaving themselves open to being exploited.

c_man · 15-01-2016 12:56PM

I'm not "victim blaming" here, I want to address one thing in particular. I don't see how this in anyway is Facebook's fault tbh.

there's no way of removing multiple friends at the same time so they don't bother.

Dunno about that and besides, there is no cure for laziness. There are Groups to which you put friends and apply different privacy settings.

syklops · 15-01-2016 12:56PM

As a relatively new company which has expanded massively its perhaps understandable that Facebook might not have its act together to properly guard against misuse

Ah here. You can't protect against stupidity. Who thinks having 5000 friends on a social medium is a good idea?

JustShon · 15-01-2016 12:57PM

There should probably be a friend limit. Let's be honest, they can't actually KNOW all of those 5,000 people.

If you want to reach / interact with a larger number of people that's what pages are for.

The_Valeyard · 15-01-2016 12:58PM

Im not sure I even know 5000 people personally?????

Just add people you know, noboday cares how many connections or friends you have.

But no new laws. Not needed. Just common sense.

LDN_Irish · 15-01-2016 12:59PM

I don't want to be too flippant but stupid people do stupid things. I don't what would make a person think adding someone who they don't know to their friends list giving them access to everything they show (which in a lot of these cases is everything they do) is a good idea.

kneemos · 15-01-2016 01:00PM

Are they not secretly flattered that someone is tearing furiously at their genitals over their pictures?

c_man · 15-01-2016 01:01PM

JustShon wrote: »

There should probably be a friend limit.

They had (still think it's in place) a limit, and people still bitched and moaned about how to get past it (e.g. "How do I break the FB friend limit?" ).

LDN_Irish · 15-01-2016 01:02PM

kneemos wrote: »

Are they not secretly flattered that someone is tearing furiously at their genitals over their pictures?

No, they're horrified apparently. I saw the post get shared and it's a generically named Brian Murphy with a generic Conor McGregor profile pic. "OMG Lisa! He could have posted pictures of any of us!" "Nooooo! I don't believe ya!"

Balmed Out · 15-01-2016 01:02PM

syklops wrote: »

Ah here. You can't protect against stupidity. Who thinks having 5000 friends on a social medium is a good idea?

Generally teenagers who are probably too young to legitimately use facebook. If one does it pretty soon half their friends will do too.

There are a lot of things which have protective features built in to protect against stupidity should things like facebook not be the same.

LDN_Irish · 15-01-2016 01:06PM

Balmed Out wrote: »

Generally teenagers who are probably too young to legitimately use facebook. If one does it pretty soon half their friends will do too.

You'd think so but you've ti be 13 to use FB and I could go through my list of 130 odd (half of whom I could lose and probably nobody would notice) and find plenty of people in their 20's with 1000 plus "friends." I've only got people I actually know, who I'd stop to chat to if I passed them in the street but even that's risky if I'm stupid. I couldn't guarantee that not a single one of them would either burgle me o tell someone to burgle me if I wrote "going to Lanzaratty for tree weaks hunzos xxx

>3"

A Shaved Duck? · 15-01-2016 01:07PM

Yer one was on 98fm there and to be honest she still has 2700 "friends" and is a lingerie model..

They were putting the point across that if your gonna accept friend requests from any tom dick or harry you have to accept some responsibility that these pictures can be taken and end up anywhere.

but her argument was that she can do what she wanted and didnt care or something... stupid people being stupid basically.

Balmed Out · 15-01-2016 01:08PM

LDN_Irish wrote: »

"going to Lanzaratty for tree weaks hunzos xxx >3"

Thats another thing, I have intelligent friends with Masters degrees who check in at airports. Good god.

Duggy747 · 15-01-2016 01:11PM

Not a new thing at all that prowlers download pictures off of people's social media profiles and upload them to porn sites, that's what happens when you befriend anyone who asks for an invite / don't take note of your privacy settings.

Facebook can have all the guards and safety nets in place but people will still abuse the system.

It's also still down to it's users to have the responsibility on what they personally share and to understand what they're uploading to the public................but we know parent's and whatnot will deem this to be all Facebook and the big scary internet's fault.

I await the inevitable politician to hop on the bandwagon to call for something stupid like an internet curfew: "Can we close Ireland's internet at 9pm?" :pac:

wil · 15-01-2016 01:13PM

biko wrote: »

I only am friends on FB with people that I have actually met IRL and want to be connected with.
So muppets on FB isn't really an issue for me.

I only am friends on FB with muppets I have met IRL. Big muppet fan

valoren · 15-01-2016 01:16PM

My niece is 18 and my cousins kids are 17 and 19. We're FB 'friends'
So you would regularly see them liking their friends profile pictures.

Jesus wept. It must be a competition to see who can post the most risque pictures in a lot of cases.
Posting up such pictures and assuming they are private is incredibly naive and that it would attract the interest of unsavoury people should not be a major surprise.

Balmed Out · 15-01-2016 01:16PM

Duggy747 wrote: »

It's also still down to it's users to have the responsibility on what they personally share and to understand what they're uploading to the public................but we know parent's and whatnot will deem this to be all Facebook and the big scary internet's fault.

A lot of people don't understand though. I can also post pictures of you or anyone else up.

LDN_Irish · 15-01-2016 01:20PM

Balmed Out wrote: »

A lot of people don't understand though. I can also post pictures of you or anyone else up.

Now, that is something that FB should be removing! I should not be able to share your picture using FB features. Obviously someone could screenshot or download anything they want but I don't think FB should be implementing features that allow a FB user to internally share any other FB users pics.

strelok · 15-01-2016 01:23PM

LDN_Irish wrote: »

Now, that is something that FB should be removing! I should not be able to share your picture using FB features. Obviously someone could screenshot or download anything they want but I don't think FB should be implementing features that allow a FB user to internally share any other FB users pics.

im reasonably sure that feature already exists, balmed out was just talking about actually taking a photo of you and putting it on his own facebook page

15-01-2016 01:25PM

Terrible story, irrespective of who one is friends with on Facebook it should be acceptable to assume that the photos you put on your private page don't end up on porn sites

Sadly though Facebook own any photos one shares perhaps this is where the law needs changing it makes it quite difficult to argue cases when your pics end up in other places.

syklops · 15-01-2016 01:30PM

Balmed Out wrote: »

Generally teenagers who are probably too young to legitimately use facebook. If one does it pretty soon half their friends will do too.

There are a lot of things which have protective features built in to protect against stupidity should things like facebook not be the same.

Faebook has a wide array of security features. You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make him update his facebooks security policies.

LDN_Irish · 15-01-2016 01:32PM

strelok wrote: »

im reasonably sure that feature already exists, balmed out was just talking about actually taking a photo of you and putting it on his own facebook page

I'm saying that you should be completely unable to share someone who isn't on your friends list pictures. As it stands now by default I can go randomly search names on FB and I could share anyones pics to my own timeline. If there's a way of turning that off then very few people seem to know that because even when people have everything locked down so that only their profile pic is visible, you can still share it.

mcgovern · 15-01-2016 01:32PM

222233 wrote: »

Terrible story, irrespective of who one is friends with on Facebook it should be acceptable to assume that the photos you put on your private page don't end up on porn sites

If you physically gave a copy of your photos to all your friends, would you still think it's reasonable to assume those photo's won't be misused? Especially if all one had to do to qualify as your friend (and thus see the photos) was ask if they could be your friend?
People need to take responsibility for their own actions.

syklops · 15-01-2016 01:32PM

Duggy747 wrote: »

Not a new thing at all that prowlers download pictures off of people's social media profiles and upload them to porn sites, that's what happens when you befriend anyone who asks for an invite / don't take note of your privacy settings.

Facebook can have all the guards and safety nets in place but people will still abuse the system.

It's also still down to it's users to have the responsibility on what they personally share and to understand what they're uploading to the public................but we know parent's and whatnot will deem this to be all Facebook and the big scary internet's fault.

I await the inevitable politician to hop on the bandwagon to call for something stupid like an internet curfew: "Can we close Ireland's internet at 9pm?" :pac:

Fidelma Healy-Eams in 5...4....3....2....

silverharp · 15-01-2016 01:35PM

Kind of meh, my view is don't put anything on social media that you would be ashamed of your future employer seeing
If their HR dept did a trawl before interviewing you.

JustShon · 15-01-2016 01:37PM

silverharp wrote: »

Kind of meh, my view is don't put anything on social media that you would be ashamed of your future employer seeing
If their HR dept did a trawl before interviewing you.

No teenager is thinking about what future employers are going to think.

This was a teenager after all, not an adult. Probably wouldn't have made the news otherwise.

Icaras · 15-01-2016 01:40PM

Im sure it's in Facebooks term's and conditions that the can do what they want with the pics you have posted up. If people don't understand how social media works but still use it they get no sympathy from me when it all goes wrong, because if there is one place where things will get out of control it's the Internet.

NomadicGray · 15-01-2016 01:41PM

I think Facebook do generally have their act together on this issur, but teenage girls certainly don't.
Parents need to presume their kids are dumb as hell with such matters & educate/supervise them.

15-01-2016 01:41PM

mcgovern wrote: »

If you physically gave a copy of your photos to all your friends, would you still think it's reasonable to assume those photo's won't be misused? Especially if all one had to do to qualify as your friend (and thus see the photos) was ask if they could be your friend?
People need to take responsibility for their own actions.

I think thats actually just victim blaming now. There is never an excuse for deliberately taking someones photo for the intention of distribution on some sick and twisted website. Never.

Social Media Misuse

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