School + facebook = bad plan

[nibbler]

So this weekend everyone at my school got added by someone called 'Jordan Paige' on facebook who has her listed school as our school (avoiding naming it atm). It soon became obvious that noebody at all knew her so people started putting jokey things on the page's wall as they thought it was a piss-take account. Today in school, we get a big talk about cyber bullying and how it ruins lives...

So my issue is this - if the school has made a fictional facebook account and is pretending to be someone they aren't in order to spy on children what are the legal implications? Any way of proving it's the school? I just think that this must be an infringement of their agreement/facebook's rules.

To add insult to injury, the 'campus cop' (read: inept policeman sent to a school to keep him out of the way - he walks through the corridors and discusses football with the head teacher and tells people to take off their coats when indoors) was involved in this talk trying to claim that messages on facebook are stored permanently in the RAM of our phones...

Furthermore, it seems remarkably like entrapment - you make up a person and then when people start to have a laugh you punish them. Granted there were some pretty crude comments but nothign threatening or violent - just jokey teenage boy material. For the record - none of this involves me.

Anyone know what's what with fraudulent facebook accounts?

[Flash477]

This may sound like a silly question, but why accept a "friend" that you don't know

[GheeTsar]

I'm not part of Facebook, but isn't adding a "friend" a two-way process; you actually have to actively accept them. In which case ,why did everyone accept this person they had never heard of?

[nibbler]

That's just what people do. Nobody seems to care, they just see that they have friends in common and accept. I'm not friends with this person anyway.

[TheAnimus]

so find out who friend0 was and go do some real world bullying?

[Michael]

It seems to be a pretty common trend for people to have as many 'friends' as they can. My sister has somewhere near 1,000 or something, and so do plenty of other people I know actually.... I mean, who knows 1,000 people? I think it's just down to an immature desire to be popular more than anything.

I tend to remove more often than add these days, and have dwindled 300 to about 100 now, which is adequate... and of those only maybe 15 or so are friends who I will actually see regularly.

As for your situation, i'd say don't worry about it. Someone probably thought it would be a good idea to see what's going on with the students, and it obviously backfired.

[nibbler]

Oh I hate facebook don't get me wrong - it's just for attention seeking idiots on the most part - I use it for communication with people who I don't see every day. And I'm not worried about it. Facebook-being-terrible issues aside, is my school allowed to do this?

[peterb]

<---snipSomeone probably thought it would be a good idea to see what's going on with the students, and it obviously backfired.

as "good ideas" on the internet often do.

[Behemoth]

On the flip side of that I never add people to FaceBook who I don't know. If I'm not sure about someone whose adding me I'll have a look at their profile first to see if I do know them, but if not then I deny the request.

[cookie365]

Ah, the time honoured 'it was only a joke' and 'I was only having a laugh' defences.

I'm not sure anyone who isn't a bully could get 'entrapped' into bullying someone. But I assume you yourself didn't post anything bullying so have nothing to worry about?

[nibbler]

Correct. No-one has put anything that bad to my knowledge and if they put anything offensive they deserve what they get. I'm just not comfortable with the School watching people on facebook.
Anyway, let's get away from friend requests for 1 minute, is the school allowed to do that is what I want to know?

[cookie365]

It's entirely up to Facebook to decide what to allow or not allow.

I'd suggest that those of you who who friended 'her' should just take this as a gentle reminder that you're not quite as bright as you thought you were, and just learn from it without pretending to be outraged about what the school did.

[nibbler]

OR maybe people could actually start listening to me instead of calling me a know it all who added a stranger - I didn't add this person, and I am not guilty of anything, I just am curious as to why the school think they can do this. Why can't I ask a question without being judged?

[peterb]

Correct. No-one has put anything that bad to my knowledge and if they put anything offensive they deserve what they get. I'm just not comfortable with the School watching people on facebook.
Anyway, let's get away from friend requests for 1 minute, is the school allowed to do that is what I want to know?

The school is certainly allowed to look at Facebook - and you will find that employers will look at the Facebook pages of their employees (or prospective employees) with some well documented cases of dismissal following some injudicious posts.

As for creating a fictitious person, that may be in breach of Facebook's T&Cs, but technically there is nothing to stop anyone from doing that, and I'm sure there are many Facebook users using false names.

But is there any proof that the school has done this, or that the person really is fictitious? Was the lecture on cyber-bullying directly linked to posts made to this 'person'? And if it was, given the response to 'them', perhaps it was a justifiable method of highlighting the problem?

[nibbler]

The school is certainly allowed to look at Facebook - and you will find that employers will look at the Facebook pages of their employees (or prospective employees) with some well documented cases of dismissal following some injudicious posts.

As for creating a fictitious person, that may be in breach of Facebook's T&Cs, but technically there is nothing to stop anyone from doing that, and I'm sure there are many Facebook users using false names.

But is there any proof that the school has done this, or that the person really is fictitious? Was the lecture on cyber-bullying directly linked to posts made to this 'person'? And if it was, given the response to 'them', perhaps it was a justifiable method of highlighting the problem?

Finally someone starts answering my question! Thankyou Peter! I'm all but certain that this person is fictitious, 500 friends and about 500 wall posts saying who is this. Also the music and film taste is very... varied



The penny dropped today when they gave us this talk. And supposedly were referring to specific people. It just seems like it shouldn't be allowed that's all There are no posts on the wall of this person which I would count as cyber bullying, it's mostly stuff like "hi [headteacher's name]" and jokey things like "Wow had a great time with you last night oh wait never met you.".

[cookie365]

OR maybe people could actually start listening to me instead of calling me a know it all who added a stranger - I didn't add this person, and I am not guilty of anything, I just am curious as to why the school think they can do this. Why can't I ask a question without being judged?

Not judging, just suggesting that those who were involved think about their own behaviour first before thinking about others behaviour. Suppose Facebook says that the school wasn't allowed to do this - assuming of course the school actually did do it. It doesn't alter the fact that posting abusive messages is still dumb.