Adventures in Comment Moderation – How to be “That Guy” on Facebook

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Mark Cahill

Most of us never even realize it, but Facebook allows us to moderate the comments that show up against our posts. In the base usage, it is very important as it allows you to remove the comments your college roommate posted containing links to the pics of you doing belly shots off an Asian hooker in Vegas last week when your boss thought you were home sick.

The problem is that it makes us all Online Community Moderators, and even worse, untrained, and potentially unprincipled Online Community Managers at that. Luckily, most of Facebook users appear to get it; they leave their comment stream alone, or only delete the occasional offending post “for cause.”

…when you attempt to control the discussion, it ceases to be a discussion, it becomes a lecture…

There are others, however, who treat their comment stream with a more Stalinist view. It’s “agree with me, or you won’t be seen with me” for them. You’ve probably run across them in the past, and not even noticed. Have you ever posted a comment, only to find hours later that it disappeared? Does it happen every once in a while, generally with the same Facebook “friend”?

You’ve run into “That Guy.” You too can be “That Guy” by following a few simple tips (in Madlib format, select the one that applies):

Have an agenda. We all want to hear all about being (conservative/progressive/a grateful dead head/transgender) all the time.
Flood our streams with your words of wisdom.
Take us to task for not being as (conservative/progressive/grateful dead head/transgender) as you are.
TYPE IN CAPS because we’re too stupid to read your missives in lower case.
Accept no comments other than “Right on”, “You rule” or “I wish I was you.” Delete the rest.
If you are unfortunately called out on something simple, like the fact that bipeds walk on two feet, not three, delete the post and all the comments, rather than fessing up.
Routinely suggest that anyone that disagrees with you should be (flogged/shot/tarred and feathered) then blame everyone else for fostering a culture of violence.
By all means, block anyone that appears to disagree with you.

Here is the sum of my 16 years in Online Community Management: when you attempt to control the discussion, it ceases to be a discussion, it becomes a lecture, and that pisses people off and makes you look like a fool.

The Illusion of Privacy

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Mark Cahill

The launch of Google Buzz this week has once again brought questions of privacy and social networking applications to the forefront. Just as many of us have questioned over the past few years the repeated failure of Facebook to respect our privacy.

To my mind, this is a very simple thing: never post anything to any networking service that you wouldn’t want to see again. Ever…

People have lost jobs over what they have posted on Facebook and elsewhere. I have seen it several times personally. Further, at some point you may need to search for a new job. A prospective employer may see that photo of you doing belly shots off that Asian hooker in Vegas last year, and bang, you don’t get a call back. In other words, it’s hurt you, badly, and you never even know it.

So right now, I bet a lot of you are saying “no problem, I’ll just clean up my profile if I need to do a job search.” The problem is that content often gets scraped off sites and turns up in other places. My content from this blog is regularly grabbed by sploggers and reposted elsewhere. It’s almost impossible to get the content removed. I’ve tried. Further, to take our Vegas analogy further, what happens if Google grabs that picture in their image search? Many bloggers use that service to find pictures to reusue, regardless of copyright. What would you think if your little Vegas picture appeared here?

Remember this: any semblance of privacy online is an illusion. From the beginning, your ISP could be logging what you do, Archive.org could be archiving the sites you post on, and Google could be indexing the images you post. Once it’s out there, you have no hope of pulling the information back. So think twice…and don’t put your faith in Facebook, Google or anyone else to respect your privacy.

The Day Social Media Went Mainstream – Google Buzz

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Mark Cahill

Google decided that I was ready for Google Buzz this morning, and it magically appeared in my email console. If you haven’t heard of it, watch this video:

On first take, when viewed inside of gmail, Google buzz seems to be a real yawn. Just another place where you need to update statuses to keep in touch with folks. Exactly what I’ve been warning would become the death of social media, the great diaspora wherein we all end up on separate and unconnected platforms.

That was my initial opinion, and now I can see I was dead wrong. This isn’t just another service, this very well could be THE service (I struggle to avoid LoTR analogies here). You see think about all the Google services, mail, image hosting, url shortening, search, profile, translate, Youtube, all woven into a single semi-open platform.

Instead of bits and pieces, we have the whole ball of wax. Then wrap in a nice little API which I assume they will offer and you have everything that Twitter, Facebook and all the other social media services aren’t – an all encompassing open social platform.

So what happens? Buzz becomes the lynch pin for the service that allows them to take on Facebook. Forget about Twitter, they are immediately an also ran service. By the end of the week, my Mother will be following me on Buzz, something that will never happen on Twitter. No, this is a Facebook killer of epic proportions.

Here’s how it goes. They firm up the platform, get people used to using it, then they make a simple pitch: who do you trust – Facebook or Google? At that point we all nod, and it’s “last one left on Facebook turn out the lights.”

This is the day when Social Media went mainstream.

The Real Currency of Social Media

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Mark Cahill

“It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food. You’ve gotta tell them. You’ve gotta tell them!” Soylent Green – 1973

So what is the real commodity of social media? It’s people. You and me, and all our friends. Period.

Over the past few weeks, this as really started to steam roller. Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Fake Steve Jobs (Real Dan Lyons) slams NY Times for their failure to report both sides of Zynga/Farmville
Jason Calacanis lashes out at Facebook’s slimy new “privacy” settings which in most cases remove all privacy in his post “Is Facebook unethical, cluelessor unlucky?“
The ACLU proves that Facebook Quizzes bypass all privacy settings for you AND YOUR FRIENDS *with tacit approval from Facebook*
Google CEO Eric Schmidt opines “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act.”

Read all the links then think about it. Basically the fine folks at Facebook, Google, etc. are selling us, and not even to the highest bidder. They’re selling us to any bidder that comes down the pike.

For the record, if you use ANY Facebook Apps, like Farmville or do Facebook quizzes, I consider it mandatory for you to take the ACLU quiz.

I’ve made the decision a few years ago to leave somewhat transparently on the web, but most of you actually believe you have some level of privacy. That level of privacy is, unfortunately, illusory.

Expect this to become a huge fight in the coming year. It won’t go away, and I suspect few of you will accept such cavalier attitudes towards your privacy.

Does Twitter Dilute Media Brands?

Posted on May 7, 2009 by Mark Cahill

For the past couple weeks I’ve been tweeting for the Reel-Time.com site under the Twitter handle “Reel_Time” and I’ve found some very interesting trends. Most disturbing is that Twitter doesn’t really appear to be an extension of the conversations that start on my site, it appears to be something wholly different. Similar conversations in a place where I don’t get any ad revenue.

As of yet, I’m not seeing this as increasing the value of the Reel-time.com brand. Of course, while twitter may be hitting the mainstream, I suspect we’re still on the bleeding edge of Twitter in the saltwater fly fishing niche. It just seems that where my readers used to find me, I am now trying to find them. A horribly upside down delivery model it is when you’re starting out!

The Bad, or Not So Good:

Spammers - they apparently target new accounts – a good number of my initial followers apparently thought I wanted to pay for the “secrets of making millions via twitter”. For the record, I don’t think there is anyone out there making THOUSANDS yet.
Mostly Shops, Guides and Website Owners - in a lot of ways its me and my competitors talking. Honestly, that makes me want to share…less.
Haphazard Marketing – I’ve seen several shops or guides who don’t have a website or haven’t updated that website in over a year. Yet they have time to tweet on a regular basis. Tweeting is nice, but take care of your marketing 101 basics first.

The Good:

Fishing Reports - while my forum users macerate on the implications of posting fishing reports via Twitter, its already happening and there are enough respected industry names doing it that I can say with certainty, fishing reports via twitter are here to stay.
Immediacy – I’m a big fan of “right the heck now.” I hate to wait. Twitter means I won’t have to wait.
New Enough That We Can Make This What We Want – I suspect the real gold here is in the hashtagging of reports. If we develop a way of tagging that makes regional sense (most New Englander’s don’t need reports from Maryland) then we’ll all win. I generally hate protocols, but this may just be what we need. Something like #SWF-BOS for Boston area reports…then fight to keep it from becoming another Usenet.

The trial continues…

Twitter, Hashtags, Baseball and a Dose of Spam

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Mark Cahill

For about a year, I’ve been using twitter and hashtags to tweet with fellow Red Sox fans about our favorite topic, the Red Sox. Over that time, I’ve seen a big change how it works.

First, a definition from Twitter Wiki:

Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

When I started about a year ago, there were a handful of folks that were tweeting with the #redsox hashtag during the games. DougH, AdamCohen, AaronStrout and Fairminder would pretty much be the list. Most of them aren’t really seen tweeting about the games anymore, and it doesn’t surprise me.

Early adopters really hate a crowd, deep down, and the numbers of folks that use the hashtag now have soared. Even Jerry Remy (and his assistant John) are using the hashtag to tweet during games. However, with the popularity, there are problems:

1. Spamming – I’m now seeing people using the hashtag to advertise stuff that has nothing to do with the Red Sox. Last night DaveAndelmann tweeted an ad for his Phantom Gourmet tv show which would air after the game. Boo hiss, Dave! If everyone does this, it becomes unuseable. The problem is that everyone seems to think that Twitter is their own private advertising medium. Really, c’mon, admit it…

2. ReTweetBots – I really hate seeing accounts (not really people) like Redsoxgame or Yankeesgame or RedSoxTweets mindlessly retweeting scores and articles with the #redsox tag. The problem is, if the original was already tagged, we’ve seen it before. With these retweetbots, we’re destined to see each article about 6 times. Stupid…

3. Red Sox Tweets Turn Off My Other Followers – Yup, not everyone wants to hear it. Since I’ve tagged my tweets, you can filter them in Tweetdeck, (go to the bottom of your friends column and find the filter icon – then select text – #redsox and they’ll be gone. But most people won’t take the time to do this.

Either we find fixes for these problems, or the noble effort that was live game tweeting will crash and burn. I predict unregulated this will go the way of Usenet possibly by the All Star break but certainly by September.

I suspect in the long term, the real solution is that live game microblogging needs to be done under the auspices of a website where someone can actually police things help maintain a quality experience. Perhaps if Jerry Remy were to put a Laconica install on his site, that’d be the place. Or perhaps the crew at SurvivingGrady.com could upgrade from their current comments system…