The dark side of Facebook: who is to blame ?

August 10, 7:19 PMDC Technology ExaminerTanya Gupta

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Since I published the last article on the divorce through Facebook, I have been coming across all sorts of nasty stories about people behaving badly on Facebook or other social apps.  It looks like there are all sorts of FB stories out there about how FB messes things up for couples.

I have to conclude, that although Facebook could allow you to behave much more poorly than you did before, it does not change basic character.  If you are a louse, you will continue to be one, regardless of Facebook or Twitter - which are both just tools that you use to achieve your ends.  The extent to which Facebook has been used for various purposes though, did shock me.

Did you know for instance that a change in Facebook status has been the reason for a murder ?  Edward Richardson, 41, stabbed wife Sarah, 26, to death in a "frenzied and brutal" attack at her parents' home in Biddulph, central England, last May after she altered her profile - she changed her relationship status on Facebook to "single".  . The couple had been living apart since the previous month, and when he saw the status change, he broke in, stabbed her, and then attempted to take his own life. He was jailed for at least 18 years.  (Story) 

I already wrote about the study that draws a relationship between the use of Facebook and jealousy.  The study said that Facebook created an environement for heightened jealousy.  However I don't think that couples in good, strong relationships would suddenly get jealous when they start using Facebook.  Then there is the woman who was divorced through Facebook.  Apparently, the "Facebook divorce" guy's name is Brady, a 39-year-old IT consultant and he was taken to court subsequently for assaulting his wife.  Again I don't think Brady hit his wife just because he used Facebook. 

There is news of yet another woman who found her husband philandering with another woman on Facebook.  Married for barely six months, Georgina Hobbs-Meyer discovered her husband had had been getting involved with another woman online. According to the column she wrote in the Guardian, she has two warnings for users of social networking sites: your whole life can be exposed - and don't get dumped online.  In her column she says,

Not that many people take relationship statuses to heart. Even if they should, they do not read "X is married to Y" and immediately write off the object of their affection as unobtainable. My divorce is proof of that.  It began with a woman he met at a party. But it was within the sticky web of Facebook where they really got to know each other, despite the photos of us and our "married to..." status. I know this because my husband once logged on to Facebook and foolishly left the room. I began to use his Mac, only to find myself blasted into the middle of a sizzling cyber romance.........Now single and unable to delete my husband from my list of friends (I am paralysed every time I try), I'm acutely aware that he can see my every move, just as I can see his. Foolishly, I fiddled with my settings and ramped up the amount of information I am fed about him. When he adds a friend or pretentiously quotes the vacuous Bret Easton Ellis in his status updates, it makes me want to vomit. And still I ramp it up".  (story)
 

Georgina's story is truly sad.  But it is also very much like real life.  So let's stop blaming Facebook for people who behave badly.

Tech Policy and Happenings:  You may be interested in the reasons behind a recent Twitter outage, how we can track criminal activity on the Web (George Sodini video), Teens and Twitter,  the use of social networking in the military, American Innovation in Crisis , Why Government keeps getting Technology Wrong , Yahoo and Microsoft vs. Google , a recent look at consumer satisfaction with federal websites, Cybersecurity: an interview with Dan Risacher at  DOD - Part 1 and Part 2, and Cloud Computing with Pete Tseronis

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