Facebook Abstainers Could Be Labeled Suspicious

bs0d3 writes "According to this article printed in tagesspiegel.de, not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murderer.(German) As examples they use Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik, who used MySpace instead of Facebook and the newer Aurora shooter who used adultfriendfinder instead of Facebook. They already consider those with Facebook accounts, who lack friends to be suspicious, but now they are suggesting that anyone who abstains from Facebook altogether may be even more suspicious."

No-one should put their true real-world there

[ron_ivi]

I thought most parents teach their kids "don't give your personal info to strangers".

Remember, Zuckerberg's a stranger to your kids no matter how many free things (services) he offers them, just as much as some guy offering free candy from an unmarked van.

In the U.S. it's the first sign you're a spook

[michaelmalak]

Many of my real-life friends have no Facebook presence because they have cleared software jobs and have been instructed to not have social profiles or blogs in order to maintain their clearance.

Just another clue that Holmes was a CIA asset.

Sociopathy

[stevegee58]

I get funny looks all the time when I say I know all about FacePlace and consciously refuse to join.
My sister worked on me for months (we're both "old") to join before I finally got testy and told her under no circumstances would I join. I think she thought I just didn't understand it and just needed to be shown how wonderful it was. She was genuinely hurt by my reaction.
It's like belonging to a religion in many ways. True believers have trouble understanding how others don't share their beliefs; clearly they just need the right explanation to bring them around.

Re:Overblown

[iamhassi]

I submit that this sort of story is overblown.Yes, this is one out of hundreds of characteristics on a list. Just having one or even fifty from the list doesn't mean any individual has crossed the threshold of "suspicious". Everyone on /. should be familiar with this sort of thing from spam filters.

Agreed - sort of. This is just one out of hundreds of characteristics, but the title is correct: Facebook Abstainers Could Be Labeled Suspicious.

And it makes sense, why would someone not want to join a site where all your friends are? It's 2012 equivalent to a shut-in or recluse. [wikipedia.org] People are naturally suspicious of someone that chooses not to join normal society.

And it's going to get worse before it gets better, even if Facebook is replaced, there will be another website most people join. Facebook has been popular for what, 6, 7 years? There are teenagers today that don't remember life without Facebook, and as those teens become adults it's going to sound more perverse to hear someone say "I do not have a Facebook account"

Even now, I know people who have been denied jobs, apartments and loans because they do not have a Facebook account, because Facebook is a great tool to contact everyone you "know" to check background and try and reach you if something happens i.e. steal and skip town, etc

Security service inspired story ?

[Alain Williams]

I know that the story CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs [theonion.com] was in the onion, but I would be surprised if the CIA did not tap into Facebook's data. Those of us who do not have a Facebook account must be a pain ... how to encourage us to tell the CIA^h^h^h Facebook all that they need to know .... how about make them feel worried that they might fall under increased suspicion ? Well: it will work with a few people, so a cheap and effective way of gathering information about more people.

Re:Two words

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what the correlation between people writing about serial killing and them being serial killers is? Probably stronger than not being on facebook and being serial killers.

Re:FB

[Blue Stone]

Facebook®: Membership Guarantees Citizenship

Thateassuring

[ecotax]

They're probably using something like a Bayes classifier and not having an FB account is just one of many features.

I don't know how reassuring this is, given that I neither have a Facebook account nor a mobile phone, and don't twitter either...

Re:Two words

[ultranova]

Isn't this just another form of discrimination? We've finally gotten (mostly) past looking at people's race, religion, sexual preference, and skin color but we can now look at their willingness to keep nothing personal and private and hold that against them? How is this legal?

You can't change your race, but you can easily create a Facebook account that contains nothing useful or interesting, send friend requests to random people and accept any that come your way. If this becomes a real issue I'm sure we can automate the whole process so that you can have virtual Facebook presence without having to actually visit the damn thing yourself. As an added bonus having various Facebots interact with each other trying to pretend they are humans while other bots try to spot them should help advance AI quite a bit.

Re:Stupidity rules

[AK Marc]

This is one time the corporates had it right before the people did. Abstaining from FB doesn't leave you anonymity. It just means you have zero control over your online image. So corporates buy extra domains they don't want to control their online presence. They have ORTs (online response teams - not sure if that's a real term, but I've run across more than one corporation with that exact name). They know that you will be out there. The only question is whether you have any control over the information about you.

Ironically, you have more control over your FB presence if you have an FB account than if you don't. Why? Because with one, you can be tagged and set yourself to private, which marginally reduces the information available. Unless you are one of the slashdotters who asserts that because you never leave Mom's basement, nobody will take a photo of you, and if they did, they wouldn't want your cheetoe-stained beard on their profile.

But yes, looking "normal" and not having a FB account is unusual, and probably does corrrelate with insanity and people wearing foil-lined wigs.

I'm Just A Liar

[assertation]

My Facebook account is under a fake name, set to unsearchable and "private" every way FB will let me do it.

I don't tell anyone related to a job that I have a FB account.

If they ask, I tell them the half truth that I deleted my FB page a few years ago when they started exposing people's info without asking.

Re:Am I a terrorist ?

[JWSmythe]

    You could always do like I do, and make most of your Facebook information, disinformation. :) I change my employer and location to various government facilities. Sometimes people get confused at the more obscure ones. Sometimes, it's just an arbitrary city and bogus employer. Most of my posts are for my own entertainment.

    I don't know what someone would be looking for there, but they're not going to find much factual stuff.

    I'm not sure, that may qualify me more to be watched. Or I already am, and have been put on the list "harmless people with strange sense of humor"