Back in August I got this email from a site that I DEARLY loved called Weird New Jersey:

I had noticed that only videos were showing up on the Weird NJ  Facebook Page were un- Weird NJ  videos, most of them were from other Countries and NONE of them had anything to do with the Weird NJ Theme.

I assumed it had been hacked and I was right.

Here’s the kicker- Facebook refuses to  do anything about it. The hacked site has been reported to Facebook by a legion of fans, Mark and Mark who own the page can’t get Facebook to do anything about it. The hacked page is STILL posting  random trashy videos.

I would encourage you  to look at the follower count for Weird NJ- it’s pretty impressive. They have 130,000 followers and if you were to hack your way into that site and start posting videos from random pages and drive their view count up it is, in a way  like currency. Call me jaded but if you could sell off admin rights to these pages, well. That would be a going concern, wouldn’t it?

Over the last year I’ve noticed that other pages I liked were going off topic and posting porn links, porn pictures- you get the point. The pages were all but abandoned and now I know why.

The original owners couldn’t get their sites back, so they walked away.

Recently one other page I likethat was hijacked and recently he went live to say he had gotten his page back ( his was being used to send out porn links ). See that- ONE page.

I’ll just toss this out there because of an odd situation with Facebook I had myself over the Summer.

A couple of months ago I got a notice from Facebook that they  ‘gave’ me permission to re-organize a page that I was a member ( note here-  I not involved in admin and I wasn’t a moderator)  of because the page was ‘inactive’. First off, that wasn’t true. People are there spewing  posts every single day.

My first reaction was to go to the page and unsubscribe because it was a local Political page and the last thing I wanted to do was all of the sudden show up as admin to a group of people that I sort of hate in real life and they know it.

I was also wondering what the heck was going on  because I hadn’t posted anything on that page for a couple of YEARS.

Now, if someone was creating mischief all it take would be to find that one jerk on a page who would take the bait  and at that point that jerk could create their own group of administrators and take over the page.

Theories aside, drama aside,  the tragedy here is Mark and Mark at Weird NJ ( who have started a new page- ) posted  the story below and had Mark and Mark at Weird NJ had access to their hijacked page they could have asked a lot of people for help for Miss Liberty ( GOFUNDME)

From the new Weird NJ – Weird New Jersey fb page:

We have received the sad news that Sondra Fortunato, a.k.a. “Miss Liberty,” a Brick/Toms River area local legend, is battling Stage 4 cancer. The disease has destroyed her left eye and is threatening her life. According to Jersey Shore Online, “The expenses associated with her treatment have resulted in the loss of her home, and she still needs more surgery to treat this very serious illness. Those who have ever gotten a smile out of her trademark sticker-covered car, or have ever had a conversation with her can let her know that won’t be forgotten.” If you’d like to help, please visit the links listed in the comments section below. Please share and help spread the word. (Photos by Ryan Thomas Doan)

I’ve really had it with Facebook -they will slap you into FB Jail for telling someone they’re looney tunes  or posting pictures that somebody is offended by but when they have what looks like a serious breach that allows pages and profiles to be stolen, Facbeook’s flimsy ‘guardrails’ fall away and all of the sudden nobody is there to mind the shop.

I still have a facebook page, but I’m using it to share pictures with my family and I’m posting links to my blog- including my minor no traffic blogs- that I post the random bits and pieces I used to post at FB.

I know alot of people like the sense of ‘community’ Facebook gives them, but you can get a free blog through Google  ( BloggerdotCom) and do the same thing- with the benefit you can actually control it yourself.

My advice to you is this- what happened to Weird NJ has been happening to other pages.  Hackers ability to ” Clone ” profiles is STILL a big issue ( it’s happened to my Mom TWICE)  I think it’s time to look to alternitives to community building on social media platforms.

Things are getting weird out there and it’s not Weird in a good way.

RDP Thursday: FLIMSY