Facebook Group Admins: Beware spammer loophole

I recently learned the hard way that Facebook has a big loophole through which spammers can crawl within Facebook Groups.

In short, if a spammer joins a group and blocks the Group Admin, the Admin is unaware of the spam activity until it is reported by Group members, because she can't see anything that this person does. But that's only the first challenge. The bigger issue comes in when the Group Admin can no longer even see the spammer within the Group Membership roster because of the banning activity. How can one delete and block a spammer when the Admin can't even see the offender in the member list?

Here's what recently happened within a Facebook Group that I started and administer, called Social Media Brainstormers:

This Group consists of people who generally make their living doing some aspect of social media. Some are speakers, some are trainers, some manage the social media operations of a company, others are consultants, you get the picture. We're all on the higher end of this relatively new communications platform, and we don't want or need to be spammed with sales messages for the very services that most of us provide. This Group is mostly a think-tank. We share ideas, post links to interesting resources, and ask each other for help in resolving issues we encounter.

Once in a while a new member spams the Group with a sales pitch, and that member is quickly politely but firmly reprimanded by many members of the Group.

Well, as the Admin, I can't really screen members who ask to join, as I can only see their public Facebook profiles, and more often than not, there's not much information available to Everyone. A couple weeks ago, someone requested membership, and he seemed to be a legitimate social media entity who could add value to the Group. Within hours, he started spamming the Group with pitches and links to his own social media training webinars. He obviously didn't understand that his audience was as educated and qualified or more so than he was, and he didn't bother to even monitor the unfavorable comments under these posts. I deleted them and sent a private message explaining his misunderstanding and asking that he please not repeat this activity.

He didn't respond, but a couple days later, he posted 2 more spammy messages that drew the increasing wrath of several Group members because he was disrespecting our time and this special space that we had built as a private resource. I deleted his posts again and sent a stern message that this was strike two and at strike three, he was out and banned from the Group.

So what did that snake do? He blocked me personally on Facebook. Suddenly my private message to him was listed as sent to "Facebook User," and I couldn't see him in the Group membership list or any of his subsequent spammy posts to the Group Wall.

He thought he had outsmarted me, but he forgot one key fact, a Facebook block is mutual, so he could also not see my Group activity. I promptly promoted another Group member, whom I trust, to Admin status and asked my friend to block and ban this person. Mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, this loophole displays an example of Facebook not thoroughly thinking through a particular privacy action and its implications over Group operations. I can think of no situation where a Group Admin should be blocked from viewing the activity of any of her Group's members. And no member should become invisible from the Admin's sight within the membership roster.

So, now I wonder, does this occur on Pages as well? Have you encountered this situation? Have you found another solution?

 

 - Christine Pilch

Image credit: This image has been used so many times across the web, that I can't find the original source. However, the creator stated that anyone could use the image, provided that they post a link to it on the creator's site. I fulfilled the owner's original requirement, but I regret not being able to post a link back to him/her now. My apology and thanks!

Comments

[Joe Bell]

Here's a question for you. I'm one of several admins for a political FB group. We get lots of trolls and I was banning merrily away till one day I went to ban someone and the checkbox for permanent banning was gone from the remove popup. I can only remove people now, which is problematic because with multiple admins the troll could reapply and get admitted by someone who doesn't know the history. Do you or any of your friends know why my checkbox went away? I miss it.

[Christine Pilch]

That's a good question, Joe. I've not seen that happen. Are you possibly logged in as another user? Perhaps it's just a bug and a simple restart would help.