Lighthearted Facebook Friends Could Make You Join NAMBLA Group 178
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."
Re:Yes, learn to grow up folks (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, relationships change. You can have a friend, and then he learns something about you which makes him hate you (doesn't matter if it's true or not, as long as he believes it's true). You cannot know this before he makes it known to you. And if he decides to make it known to you by doing revenge, you cannot prevent it, because you cannot expect it.
Moreover, someone who was never really a friend can play a friend exactly to get your trust, and thus to enable him to do more serious damage to you.
Joining and then leaving a group makes you immune? (Score:4, Informative)
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?
Re:Wait.. WHAT? (Score:5, Informative)
I know it's /., but please at least RTFS (read the f'ing SUMMARY), which explains that this is a NEW Facebook feature, which works DIFFERENTLY from the OLD Facebook feature. You've just described the OLD Facebook group feature. This one works differently.
Re:yet another reason (Score:3, Informative)
Won't help. A perfect stranger could put up info, pictures, etc that could be just as damaging, even if you have nothing to do with them or facebook.
Re:Non-issue? - bull (Score:1, Informative)
In what insane world is it acceptable design to let _someone else_ add you to groups without your consent?
Re:Yes, learn to grow up folks (Score:3, Informative)
Of course... are we not laying the blame in the wrong place?
Why are you being denied access to the plane? Why again? Is it because someone posted something on facebook? No... its because there are morons out there who think that they are somehow making the world safer by pulling names out of their ass and adding them to lists.
Its the very fact that a "no fly list" even exists that is the REAL problem here. Ditto on employers trolling facebook for dirt. Its stupid.
-Steve
Re:Yes, learn to grow up folks (Score:3, Informative)
Yea, to 1st post, why should anyone be able to control the groups they're associated with? You're right, it should work just like real life where your most casual friends sign you up for all sorts of things that you have no control over, and you're just an idiot unless you simply accept your fate and go along with it, or terminate all your friendships just in case.
It's obvious to me there's no other solutions, you just have to pick one of those two extreme, unpalatable options. THERE IS NO OTHER POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE.