As the my business moves away from the world of affiliate and internet marketing, I leave behind me a world that I will not be sorry to see a lot less of! In my last post I mentioned the frustrations of the users who use these sites fo their proper use, which is to flag pages that will be of interest to the people who are looking for information on a particular subject. The kind of user I am going to talk about today is a completely different beast but all the more dangerous. I am talking about the user that for no reason what so ever decides that it is their sole purpose in life to make everyone elses experience online a nightmare. Story time again……
I have a close friend who I spend a fair amount of time with due to the fact that she is a member of a club I use a lot for a particular hobby, she is also a close friend of my wife and they have known each other for years. I know that this lady is a heavy internet user and has managed a number websites for her own businesses and been very successful. Over the past few months both my wife and I had mentioned that we had not seen as much of her and that when we did see her and her husband they were very distant with everyone around them, a major change from the norm.
I managed to bump into her husband on our local high street and asked him if he would join me for a coffee. Over what turned out to be several cups of coffee he explained that over the past 3 months their lives had not only been made a misery by what can only be described as a stalker but this individual was destroying their business and their reputation not only online but off it as well.
When I asked what had happened he said they were doing their usual afternoon on the internet forums going from one to another answering questions and giving advice on the business that the both of them knew inside and out. They were also posting their regular articles to their own sites as well as a number of other sites that they guest write for as well as local newspaper. Suddenly they had a message from one of the social media sites saying their account had been blocked for SPAM.
Now had they been the sort of people that would SPAM I would have had no sympathy but what happened next worried the heck out of me. The newspaper that they wrote a weekly article for called them and said it had recieved a complaint about the information they were giving and it had no choice but to pull their weekly slot until they had verification that all was correct. This followed site after site pulling their information, these are repritable websites that have tens of thousands of hits a day.
When I asked if he knew what had happened he said yes, someone had asked a question in one of the forums and the answer that they gave was taken in the wrong context and the person who had asked the original question had not done what most NORMAL people do and reply in the forum saying “I think you might be wrong!” or “I am not sure if you realize but I am a bit upset by your answer!” No this particular nasty idiot went on a rampage to ruin their lives both online and offline.
He found out their company name as it was in the signature at the bottom of their forum posts, he bombarded their offices with spam and pornographic material, he called every company that had ever given them a testimonial or emailed them telling them that they were the worst people on the planet basically. All in all he made their lives hell for 3 months and all they could do is apologize to the people around them for the inconvenience that this person was causing.
They had called the police who said pretty much there was nothing that they could do because the overall attack wasn’t on them personally it was their reputation that was being attacked. They had changed their online account names but every time they started talking in forums this person somehow worked out it was them and instantly flagged them in the forums.
This is the absoulte extreme and in legal terms apparently because there is not much that can be done as they were effectively public figures. Fortunately this particular case has a happy ending which has only come around in the past 3 weeks, the person who had been causing all of the problems has been arrested and charged with wasting police time after making accusations that proved to be completely incorrect.
I am a great believer in karma what goes around comes around and this couple didn’t deserve the beating they took as their business is helping people and a majority of their work came from their reputation and the hard work they put in on their reputation. Now they are pretty much starting again from scratch but the point of the matter is that they can and will, where as the culprit for starting all of this now has a criminal record for their spite.
Seeing what has happened to my friends I can completely understand why people have reservations about going onto social sites such as Myspace and Facebook. Lets face it who hasn’t had a failed relationship where someone got hurt? Who hasn’t once upset a friend at some point? And worse of all who could have let someone down in a way that they would rather forget.
Social Networking is called so because it is “Social” not unsocial, it is for people to get along with others and not get spiteful and stupid. A massive learning curve for a lot of people as it means that they have to learn how to like people and be nice to people for it to work. I am friends with a few ex girlfriends on facebook, I have also met up with old school friends I never thought I would ever hear from again, it is a fantastic tool if used properly. If you feel you can use these tools to get back at people from your past or vent anger then please for your own sake go and see a doctor your not well! Leave those that want to socialize and have a life online as well as offline alone.
As for those running social networking websites you have a responsibility to protect your users from abuse of any kind. Having a disclaimer at the bottom of your website that says you are not responsible is not taking responsibility for this. You don’t have to police your website just be aware of what is going on. At the moment in the UK there is a town where a number of suiscides have been linked to a possible growing cult on a social networking website. Now it doesn’t take a genius to know that these people who run the sites are looking at the commercial aspect of having thousands of people an hour on their websites, with this in mind it should be up to them to have trend falgs in place so that when a particular trend is being followed it throws up red flags to check out what is happening. You can do this and still respect peoples privicy you don’t have to be intrusive you can have word flags. If you are worried about the cost of checking these things then you should reconsider why you are in the business that you are.
Make sure you stay safe online and please BE NICE the world is an ugly enough place as it is it doesn’t need any more hatred.
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