Thread: Deleting Facebook Posts

Sarah Palin Facebook Post Deleted, Thanks to "Social Experiment" made me think about a couple of things:

• Deleting competitors Facebook posts.
• Deleting negative Facebook posts as part of SERM activities.

Definitely not something nice to do, but... SERPS are WAR.

Deleting competitors Facebook posts

Don't you have to be the admin in order to delete a Facebook post?

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Don't you have to be the admin in order to delete a Facebook post?

According to the article, if enough "people" flag a post as hateful or racist speech it will be automatically deleted.

So its like a voting system! Democracy rules!

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

According to the article, if enough "people" flag a post as hateful or racist speech it will be automatically deleted.

I think a similar voting/reporting system is used to delete accounts in Orkut .

So I bet someone could cause a nightmare for their competitor if they had a bot go a few times each day and "report" everything that their competitors posted.

Not that I would recommend this or even do it myself...

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

According to the article, if enough "people" flag a post as hateful or racist speech it will be automatically deleted.

If I am not mistaken, there is a mod for vBulletin that will QUEUE a post that has been reported X number of times (If it's not for vB, then I swear I've seen it on other places). And on paper, the idea is certainly sound.

Your email does the same thing when it's flagged as spam, if enough people report it, the next person that gets it will get it in their spam folder rather then the inbox.

These things are normal...

On this case however, I wonder if the post would have been reinstated if *I* posted that on my Facebook wall. That line certainly could cross the line, though it's still far from 'hate' speech IMHO.

Now look to Stumbleupon or Digg. They do similar things as well if I am not mistaken (again, mainly for spam). SU (at least) also has the "thumbs down" option which can be used to hinder a competing site.

But now it turns to ethics...

All's fair in Love & War (and apparently SERP).

But what of the sites we do this too? Well, if you take the REP system on the forums as an example, some admin actually watch out for abuse of the system, and those found abusing it loose the privilege all together. Rep gangs have KILLED the system for many a forum causing the system to be shut down, or the abusing parties infracted.

If you are planning on trying this out, do it with extreme caution! If the same accounts (or IPs) are the same sites/pages/other accounts over & over again, that too could cause flags to be raised. If not NOW, then certainly in the future. The social sites we 'attack' are not idiots, neither are SE's. They will catch on if we are not careful, and once they catch on, we could be the ones to suffer.

As this practice is equally unethical as our own pages...and possible even less so, as we are hurting someone else.

So if your love of is strong enough, then go on & try it... but please keep in mind the warnings.