Facebook owners join NAMBLA.
Author: Bob Draper
Website:
www.insured411.comemail: info@insured4
Date: 10/08/2010
Let me help you understand what NAMBLA stands for:
It is an acronym for "North American Man/Boy Love Association."
Blogger Michael Arrington, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis all found themselves added to a FaceBook group called NAMBLA.
OK, OK, I know your wondering why would the owners of FaceBook want to join such a group?
Well they didn't really, it was joke someone was playing on them with the new group feature on face book.
The new feature works like this, the feature now lets users automatically add existing friends to groups, but they can't do this with people they don't know.
That is how technology blogger Michael Arrington, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis all found themselves added to the group called NAMBLA.
Arrington added them to the group as he is listed as their friend. Arrington did go on to say
"as soon as Zuckerberg unsubscribed I lost the ability to add him to any further groups at all, another protection against spamming and pranks."
What a prank to pull on them! Wish I could have thought of that.
Arrington himself was added to the group by someone named Jon Fisher, one of Arrington's 4,824 Facebook friends. Fisher is also one of Calacanis's 4,740 friends. So you can see the mess that can be caused here.
A Facebook spokesperson did reply with:
"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."
The real person behind the prank was Jon as he claimed to have set up the fake NAMBLA page.
"Seeing as how crowd manipulation and influence over the interwebz is sooooooo easy already, plus tack on this as a social parody of sorts, and poof, you have yourself a publicity nightmare on a scale that would be spreading far more rapidly than any BP oil spill ever could," he added.
So I would guess this new feature is safe to use, but I would still look out for pranks and fake marketing people. Also check daily to what groups people may have joined you to.
Seems like they're not making facebook much safer, but building holes for people to exploit.
Let's be careful out there!