The Darker Side of Facebook:

Some months ago, I wrote an article for Associated Content, entitled The World of Facebook and It's Addictive Games. It related my own introduction to the whole Facebook concept when I first joined up a little over two years ago and how at the time, I only knew a handful of friends to connect with and wasn't very involved with the website. I also gave a brief little history of Facebook and how it originated back in 2004, via it's creator Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard student who wanted fellow students to be able to connect within the system and how it progressed to the now worldwide networking phenomenon it's currently gotten to be with over 300 million people. I also related that it wasn't until I discovered that many of my fellow friends at a discussion forum of MyLot also belonged to Facebook about a year ago, that my involvement became more pronounced, and especially so when I got addicted to the many games one can play over there. I even gave examples of what types of games were there and how they worked.

In my previous article I primarily focused on the games, but I didn't really elaborate or go into detail about the various pages or groups one can join or become a fan of over at Facebook. Well now I feel it's time to do so, but for an entirely different reason than expected, for you see, with many of the groups that are created, they unfortunately expose the more negative and darker side of Facebook.

For the most part, the majority of the pages or groups one can join are rather like everything else in life, that is they reflect what's on people's minds and can be anything from the cute, charming, serious, political, religious, humane animal rights, news items and so forth. There are even groups aimed concerning issues of the games one can play at Facebook.

Now to give an example of pages and groups in more depth, and I guess I'm citing this category of cats being a cat lover. If one was to type in a simple search for instance for "Cats" one will come up with at least 3,800 listings for "page" results. Most of these pages are ones aimed at people who love cats and whose members wish to post cute photos or videos either of a their own cat(s) or post and share cute photos or videos found on the internet; one can join these pages and become "fans". Then there are the groups, and to give an example of cats once again, there are some with the same function as the Cats "pages" but are instead labeled as a group, and as with the "pages" they too can be entirely light-hearted ones, in other words, anyone who is simply and plainly a cat lover can join. Some of the groups are even comical or just for fun ones, such as the "Cats are better than Dogs" group. However, there are also Cat groups that are related to cat organizations and/or humane societies; there are groups dealing with cat health or medical issues, such as the Cerebellar Hypoplasia Cats and Kittens group, in which people who own cats or kittens with this condition can join. I'm just relating to the cats pages and groups, but there are a legion of pages or groups for other animals (dogs = 74,00 groups and 6,500 pages, horses = 5,800 pages and 1,900 groups; birds = 1,400 groups and 4,600 pages).

So here at Facebook we have pages or groups aimed at whatever interest a person might want to get involved with, and one of the great things about these pages and groups is that it is phenomenal in connecting with like-minded people who are on the same "wavelength" so to say. I can't begin to tell you how many new friends I've found with such pages or groups.

To be honest, all this time with my belonging to Facebook, I must have been living in some kind of sheltered bubble or something. In fact, sad to say I think most people who belong to Facebook, including many of my friends also weren't aware of a more sinister side to this famous networking site. I went to Facebook, primarily to interact with my friends, play the games and join various pages or groups that interested me. It's only been recently however, that unfortunately, I've discovered that there is a much darker side of pages or groups that are started by people over at Facebook who have sick, twisted minds. I wouldn't have even known about these types of pages or groups until I came across and joined the "I Don't Like The Facebook Groups That Hurt Cats and All Animals" that was started by Britt Johnson. I then also joined the Cat's Cause: Take Down Group "DEAD CATS ANYONE??, which was then was later revised to another spin-off group called, Cat's Cause: Speak For Those Who Can't Speak For Themselves, both started by Megan Tiederman. These pro-animal groups are in a sense act as watch-dogs in which members try to find the anti-animal and animal abuse type groups and report these offensive groups to Facebook to have them removed.

One very offensive and disturbing group, and as the name implies, the Dead Cats Anyone? group had members who would post horrible photos of cats that had been tortured, mutilated and killed for some kind of sick "entertainment". One series of photos posted by one member there showed a series of photos of a young dead cat placed inside a circled pentagram, the next photo showed the young cat cut in half and the third showed it's inside disemboweled for some Satanic-type ritual. Another member posted a video, which unfortunately, there are many of the same types out there and often found on YouTube, of a young innocent kitten, crammed into a small hamster-sized cage, the cage door slammed shut, then being doused with lighter fluid or gasoline and, yes as you may guess, set on fire. We, the members, including myself of the Cat's Cause: Take Down Group "DEAD CATS ANYONE?? group relentlessly reported this group to Facebook, and yes, it was eventually taken off and deleted, unfortunately a reincarnation cropped up called "Dead Cats Anyone??-Part II cropped up, and once again we reported it and it too was removed.

Now under the Terms of Service at Facebook in Section 3: Safety which states:
We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to do that, which includes the following commitments:
#7. You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

In other words, members of Facebook have to be alert to any person, group, page, photos and/or other material that in a nutshell are extremely offensive, or disturbing to other members. To give an example of how the pro-animal groups work in the removal of the offensive, sick, and twisted anti-animal and animal abuse groups, we report like crazy. Each and every profile, group or page on Facebook has a "Report" tab that one can click on, and a drop down appears in which one can click the appropriate reason why one is reporting. As for the graphic photos that these sick groups post, one can also report any and all photos as graphic, offensive or showing violence, and lastly is the Facebook abuse email one can write to which is at abuse@facebook.com.

The real disturbing part of these pages or groups is that unlike a person's profile page at Facebook which can be set to private and only friends can view, anyone can view the contents of these offensive pages or groups, meaning minors can somehow accidentally come across them and view the horrific contents. If as an adult I'm distressed about seeing the graphic photos posted, I can only imagine how distressing it would be for a minor to see. Also, disturbing is that of course, the people starting such pages or groups hide under aliases and are known as the "trolls" of the internet, those nefarious culprits that have nothing better to do that wreck havoc and are the troublemakers that seem to crop up all over on the internet. They are in essence pathetic people who hide behind the computer never using their own name, but often using made up names, quite often with the word troll incorporated in the made up name or use the name of a celebrity, post a photo avatar that naturally is not a photo of themself, and also most likely it's one single person that may often make up several accounts.

Such offensive behavior shouldn't be tolerated at Facebook. I don't think the originator of Facebook had it in his mind people creating horrible pages or groups. The most frightening aspect one has to consider however, is the idea that hiding behind these sick pages and groups, are people who may in fact be animal abusers themselves. One alarming fact is that if people are animal abusers, they will most likely at one point abuse people as well as stated in an article on the pet-abuse.com website.

One rather alarming and famous case of blatant animal abuse was the Kenny Glenn issue of last year and I wouldn't have heard about it otherwise, but a group emerged at Facebook not long after the incident called "Dusty This Is For You". The story goes, that on February 15, 2009 Kenny Glenn, a fourteen year old teenager, where his face is covered and mask, hiding his identity posted a video on YouTube where he is seen torturing his pet cat Dusty. Irate animal lovers who saw this video reported it to YouTube and it was pulled off, however one person managed to track Kenny down and his whereabouts via his MySpace profile page and authorities removed a terrified, battered yet still alive Dusty and was placed into a shelter, along with another cat Glenn had, named Patches who was reportedly abused. Unfortunately not much was done in prosecuting Glenn to the full extent of the law since he was a minor and merely got basically a slap on the wrist for "bad behavior".

What is also disturbing is that we are hearing more and more cases of animal abuse or killings and usually done by young teenagers. One such story was the one from June of 2009 of a Florida teenager named Tyler Weinman, who mutilated and killed 19 cats. I don't think I have to go on further by reporting each and every example of young teens torturing, mutilating or killing animals for "entertainment" and sick fun, but it does make one wonder if such members of these disturbing groups at Facebook are animal abusers as well.

Animal abuse of any kind should never be tolerated and neither should the people behind such behavior. I also feel that stiffer laws should be enforced concerning any animal abuse case and not merely slaps on the wrist or sentenced to the usual community service type of punishment. Neither should this demonstration animal abusive kind of behavior be tolerated on networking websites such as Facebook, where people start pages or groups that in effect glorify animal abuse by posting offensive photos and/or videos of showing animals being tortured, mutilated or killed. Groups like the pro-animal groups I've mentioned and belong to feel our hands are tied and we're not getting much done. Many of us too, have even contacted the various well known animal organizations such as HSUS (Humane Society of the United States), ASPCA, and PETA but all we've gotten back as a response that it is up to Facebook itself to take down these animal abuse pages or groups, not them.

So while yes, the offensive pages or groups are pulled off with enough people reporting them, many of us feel more needs to be done at the Facebook level, such as the idea that before any page or group goes up "live" (which is instantaneous), that a team at Facebook should be designated to review each and every page or groups that is initiated.

What Can You Do?

I feel more and more attention should be drawn to this issue of what is going on at Facebook to permanently remove not only these animal abuse pages and groups, but perhaps for Facebook to track down the people that start them, since for all we know, they may be animal abusers themselves. If this kind of behavior disturbs you and it should, write letters to you local papers, email/write to celebrities via their websites that are known as die-hard animal lovers, such as Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Whoopi Goldberg, and anyone else you can think of, and who knows maybe it may wind up as a topic for a show on one of these shows and will present this negative and darker side of what is going on at Facebook.

Sources

Animal Abuse Issues

pet-abuse.com website

Kenny Glenn

Florida Teen Kills 19 Cats

Celebrities To Contact About This Issue

Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres

The View(the show that has Whoopi Goldberg on it)

The View

Oprah Show

Oprah Winfrey