How Absurd, Facebook! Part 2

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Courtesy of /www.decontrabas.com

Thank you Facebook for providing enough fodder to write about this subject twice! For part 1, click here. Oh, I could write even more; at any rate, the absurdities continue!  Hang on to your photos of cute kitties and enjoy the ride! 

#5 A friend decides to rummage through your old photos and likes a few; suddenly, old news is new again as others see the post in their feed and it gets a second life. Yes, Facebook works in mysterious ways; do check the date on what’s in your newsfeed. Now, this occurrence is actually a good thing in most cases unless you forgot to delete that photo where your slip was showing. 

#6 Ever “like” a comment or post and then your “like” just doesn’t stick? Get some better glue Facebook! 

#7 Are you a page owner who has had the misfortune of having to ban someone from your page? First, the “offender” has to have made a recent post since you’ll never find them in the vast list of fans which only goes back to around the last one hundred or so. 

Then, when you do finally ban them, they can still see all the posts (since most pages are public are public this is usually the case), share your posts AND rejoin your page! Facebook, either change the rules and make a banning a true banning, or, if you want to be wimps about it, call your current criteria “first offense”; you know, more like a wrist slapping!

#8 Double trouble: Applies to personal profiles, pages, and groups. Have you ever made a post that appears to not have posted? It’s still sitting there with the post button in full color glory? What do you do? Of course, you hit post again, and suddenly you’ve got TWO posts of the same thing. OOOPS…and apologies; there’s no clear solution for this one!

#9 Friend recommendations. While making recommendations of folks to friend is a noble practice, many are people I have no common friends with and lots of them come “complete” without a profile photo! What’s up with that, Facebook? Time to reprogram that algorithm? 

And a woman turned up in the recommendations today with the same name as someone I used to work with, however, it wasn’t her! And no, it’s not a common name either. 

Whew; writing about absurdities can exhaust you. Good thing there’s caffeine; Gordon Lightfoot sang about that second cup back in the 70’s. Sounds like a plan. And to avoid even more absurdities, visit us on our website, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. 

Banning on Facebook: It’s Just an X, Right?

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X marks the spot. Well, perhaps if you’re digging for gold. With Facebook, however, it’s another story, especially when it comes to banning someone from your page.

Personally, I don’t like the thought of it. It’s a very negative thing to do. On the other hand, the purpose is to get rid of that negativity that’s causing conflict on your page.

It’s the story…of a lovely lady…

Actually, no.

Meet Karen, former fan of Groovy Reflections (my “other” biz). The page currently has 4,573 fans and 1,113 are “talking about this”. It’s a page that has lots of participation.

But Karen does not participate. She never “likes” a post, nor does she comment. About six months ago, she suddenly started sharing posts from the page to other pages or groups, stripping off the sourcing of where she took the post from. Here's an example:

This is the original post on Groovy Reflections.

And here is what Karen posted on another page:

Is this stealing or sharing? The majority of the posts were music videos from YouTube (like the example), however, a few were original photographs that I uploaded to the site. No, I didn't watermark them (have now started doing that).

When this started six months ago, we tried to smoke her out by asking her to comment. She didn't respond. Plan B. I joined a group she was in and contacted the owner about her. He didn’t care. So I commented right on one of her “posts”. She commented back and was, softly speaking, unreasonable. Her language was colorful. 

I responded in a civil tone. She again responded in a similar fashion as previously implying that I didn’t “own” anything.

Then, POOF! The entire post was gone. And wham! Karen blocked me. She did stop sharing posts on Groovy Reflections. At least, until a few days ago.

I couldn’t easily ban her from the site. WHY? Because to ban someone they have to either be a recent fan so that you can find them in the fan list or they have to comment on the page. One of my admins graciously scanned back in time in an attempt to find her and found her commenting in October 2011.

But I, personally, couldn’t ban her. I couldn’t see her, since she blocked my profile. So an admin did the honors. And since then, after all the time we’ve spent, I’ve learned just exactly what banning does. The user can...

• ...still see all your posts since they are public, however, they can’t like or comment on them.
• ...still “like” your page, and your posts will be in their news feed.
• ...share your posts.

Conclusion: It is useless and a waste of energy to ban someone from your page in a situation such as this one. It means nothing. It does nothing. Karen can still take whatever she wants from the page.

Facebook, I ask you: Why even have banning then? It serves no purpose in this case though it somewhat useful for removing spammers (they’ll be back with a new account eventually though). Why not include “another level” of “banishment” where they can’t see your page at all so that is truly “permanently banning”? Call it “eliminating” since that is putting an end to something. This would make it final. Done.

At the top of my wish list: More control over pages please, Facebook.

X doesn’t mark the spot.

This is X for the Blogging A to Z Challenge. Here’s V and W. More MODern Marketing can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. And now, what could be more fitting than a tune from the Los Angeles band X?