Poster Beware

Add one more reason for me to delete my Facebook and never look back: the proliferation of scammer feeding grounds packed with vulnerable people. Just take a look at this horseshit going down in FB-town, my friends:

Facebook, by making desperation so easily searchable, has exacerbated the worst qualities the treatment industry. A word-of-mouth industry with a constant supply of vulnerable and naive targets who feel stigmatized and alone is a scammer’s paradise. Facebook does have tools to report groups that are abusive, but given the murky definition of patient brokering, Facebook’s legendary lack of transparency, and the fact that it already went to a lot of effort to promote the earlier incarnation of Affected by Addiction, which Mendoza himself admits was a deceptive marketing scheme, Facebook hardly seems like a good arbiter. (Cat Ferguson, for The Verge)

Now, if FB had some transparency, or some motive beyond profit, I might be willing to cut them some slack. But they don’t, and I’m not. Facebook exists to monetize your desperate loneliness for ad companies, and it’s a fishing ground for other scammers looking to do the same.

Caveat emptor, indeed.