Facebook Is A Foaming Cesspool of Ineptitude (And That’s Why I’m Leaving)
I don’t know about you, but when Facebook Messenger shows me a ‘Message Request’ (sent from a person who is not among your approved list of Facebook ‘friends’), I expect spam.
It usually is, to be fair.
But this particular message request, received post-lunch on a gloomy Wednesday, was different:
I looked up ‘Caroline Stevens’s’ profile, and there it was:
It’s unnerving, seeing your picture used to personalise the profile of a complete stranger. Especially when you know they’ve only done it to scam people out of their hard-earned cash.
(Even if part of you is ever-so-slightly flattered, since it proves you must look like an open and trustworthy type).
Still, I was confident that Facebook would sort it out right away.
Because it’s a pretty simple case. For one thing, the photo is clearly of me. The person who sent that message request had cleverly done a reverse-image search on Google, and was taken straight to my Medium profile (I used that picture to headline this article).
For another, I’ve had a Facebook page since 2009, so there are plenty of pictures and links that prove who I am and what I look like.
For (yet) another, ‘Caroline Stevens’s’ profile URL includes a name that isn’t actually Caroline Stevens.
So I looked it up. Within a couple of minutes I’d found the likely scammer: a surly teenage boy with crappy trainers and the vacant stare of Whitney Houston’s stalker in ‘The Bodyguard’.
(“Nooooooo”)
Why did I think he might be the scammer?
URL blunder aside, Teenage Stalker was ‘friends’ with ‘Caroline Stevens’.
I couldn’t share any of this with Facebook directly, as their reporting tools are automated and multiple-choice. Still, I reported Caroline’s profile, and I asked my friends to report it as well.
I got a message back within 30 minutes, telling me the profile wasn’t in breach of Facebook’s “community standards” (in fact it’s in breach of all four) and to report any offending content itself, “i.e. a photo”.
So I reported Caroline’s profile photo, and I asked my friends to report it as well.
But according to Facebook, nothing untoward had happened.
So I asked for a second review.
And here’s the response I got:
(Really Facebook?
In the 10 minutes since I requested another review, “many people” have suddenly been affected by a pandemic that started over two years ago, and that most countries — and companies — have got a handle on?
You are a company with a current net worth of $430 billion.
Are you really telling me that you can’t pay a few people to check these crappy, easily-detectable made-up profiles with their own human eyes?
I mean, if you can’t be arsed, why not just say so?)
Apparently, if I find the content “offensive or upsetting”, I can simply hide or block it.
Like I’m just a big ol’ ostrich in a desert of fake sand.
Meanwhile, ‘Caroline Stevens’ carries on posting ‘her’ flat listings using my photo. I — and my fiancé — receive more message requests, and now actual calls, from would-be victims trying to check if ‘she’ is real.
So the “head in fake sand” approach is clearly not going to work. And since Facebook’s response is akin to Vladimir Putin manning the phones at The Samaritans, here’s what I did to try and stop this myself:
· Sent a ‘cease and desist’ message to ‘Caroline’ (surprise surprise, she didn’t reply).
· Trawled Teenage Stalker’s ‘friend’ list and found someone who looked like he might possibly be his father. I sent this man a message, hoping he might shame his son into deleting the profile (no response).
· Found Facebook’s “legal profile removal request” form, entered all the details, including links and message attachments (only to be told right at the end that I didn’t have “sufficient authority” to make the request).
· Tried to find a human, or even a chat bot, to talk to at Facebook (these do not exist).
· Searched for human employees of Facebook on LinkedIn, then messaged a complete stranger, hoping they’d have an in-road to getting ‘Caroline’ removed (no response, but to be fair I probably came across as quite mad).
Should I have to do all of this?
Should anyone?
Worryingly, stealing someone’s photo to use on your profile isn’t illegal, if you aren’t looking to gain financially from it.
‘Caroline’ clearly is. But not from me, which apparently muddies the waters.
(I know: weird).
This kind of theft is terrifying, when you think about the potential emotional effects. For example, my fiancé and I recently watched the MTV series Catfish UK.
One episode in particular shook me to the core. Alex had fallen headlong in love with Matt, with whom he’d been chatting online for over a year.
They had never met in person; at first due to Covid, and then because Matt always found an excuse to call things off at the last minute.
The show’s self-styled ‘catfish hunters’ soon got to the bottom of the problem: Matt wasn’t real.
‘He’ was a woman Alex had unknowingly pissed off at a party they’d both been to. Apparently, he’d murmured that she was “boring”, though not to her face, and she didn’t hear it first-hand.
Alex couldn’t remember saying this at all. He hadn’t even known who this woman was.
But this small, second-heard incident was enough for her to set up a fake social-media profile and steal a year of Alex’s life. More, since he’d have to get over the trauma caused from being reeled in by a catfish, and the pain from having his heart trampled on.
If you were one of the many people who listened to the compelling live-investigation podcast, Sweet Bobby, you’ll know that even worse things can happen, when someone chooses to live an emotionally-manipulative fake online life.
(I listened to every Sweet Bobby episode practically open-mouthed with shock).
I know that, at least from this standpoint, what’s happening with ‘Caroline Stevens’ is not earth-shattering.
It’s upsetting, and I feel weirdly responsible for the people getting scammed.
But there are plenty of photos of me online. Maybe I should just accept that someone or other, at some time, might set up a fake social-media profile using one.
What I don’t think I — or anybody else — should have to accept, is that the platform these profiles are set up on will just wash their hands of them.
That they’d refuse to communicate directly, as humans, with the people who have helped them make that cool $430 billion.
So I’m off.
(I’m writing this because I have/had a business page on Facebook. I want something to refer people back to if and when they ask me why I left, so it doesn’t look like my business has collapsed, or that I’ve vanished into thin air.
But I’m also writing it just in case one day the right person reads it, and maybe feels inspired to do something about a worrying phenomenon that, at the moment, has everybody looking the other way).
