My First REALLY Bad Experience on Facebook

[Courtney Smolen]

Evening folks,

 

I've just experienced my first negative encounter with a recent alum on our facebook page. She's appears to be quite miffed. She posted several comments on the page to one subscriber (who posted a negative comment to one of our posts), cursing him out and, in one instance, suggesting he die (how lovely).

 

We removed her comments from our page, in accordance to our stated policy and reached out to her through e-mail telling her why we took her comments down and encouraged her to repost on our wall without using any offensive or deragaroty language. We decided not to remove the other subscriber's posting because it was his opinion and did not violate any of our set guidelines.

 

Unfortunately this threw the girl into a tail spin of comments which has spanned over several hours (with no comments from the community, either for or against her). To me, it seems, that her anger is part of a larger issue and was triggered by this man's comments. Our office did try to reach out to her about this but she refuses to not respond back.

 

How to handle? It appears that nothing will really "calm" her. She makes the claim that her first amendment rights are being violated (and that we don't set the policies for our Facebook page) and that her voice is being silenced by the removal of her comments.

 

I would be very interested (and appreciative) in hearing your comments about this and what would be the best approach to take in diffusing this situation (I think she is here to stay!). On one hand, it may serve us well to know what these "larger issues" are (as this may be a campus-wide issue), however, it may be something that top management may not want to hear or deal with at this time.

 

Help!

 

Courtney

 

[Patrick Powers]

I think you've taken the right approach in this case, for what it's worth.

And while you may not be able to set the policy on Facebook, Facebook does. The company is pretty clear in regard to its terms of services:
- You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
- You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

If she continues to pursue her harassing posts, I'd notify her of your plans to report her to Facebook.

[Courtney Smolen]

Thanks Patrick for your feedback, I appreciate them.

She made it difficult for me to reach out to her (she blocked the option of sending an e-mail through her Facebook account), however recent alums still have access to their accounts for a year; are you suggesting I reach out to her that way or through a comment?

My original idea when I first removed her comments was to reach out to her personally about the reasons and not publicly - I wasn't sure if that was the best approach or if I should have made our reasons known on our page - what's your take?

Thanks!
Courtney

[Stevie Rocco]

Whether or not top management wants to unveil the larger issue, the fact that they're engaging in social media makes it almost a necessity. I agree with Patrick that you're currently doing the right thing--you could let it just play out and hope she loses steam eventually. Even if that's the case, however, I would summarize the comments, the steps you took, and why you took them, and make sure those get to the right people in management. The worst thing that could happen is for one of them to be blindsided in a meeting with someone saying, "So what's with that chick on your Facebook page?" Giving them a heads-up to the situation and how you're handling it would be my recommendation.

Finally, you might encourage others you know who interact on the page to post other items on other topics. That will get her comments "below the fold" and help move things along so that her rhetoric isn't the top thing up there.

Just my two cents. :) Good luck!

[Courtney Smolen]

Hi Stevie,

Thanks for your "two cents" - it's certainly appreciated. I agree top management needs to confront any campus wide issues head on - it'll own serve the college for the better in the long run. I've already informed both my direct supervisor and vice president about this issue. I don't believe anyone knew about this until I discovered it so we're definately on top of the situation. I'm waiting to hear what the verdict is. :P

I was thinking along the same lines as you noted in your post and move on from her commentary and continuing posting things on the wall (without it being too obvious to her what we're doing). My concern is, will she think we're "ignoring her" (which, to some degree, we are) and will she go off on another tirad. I guess if that's the case, I could go with what Patrick suggested and put her on notice.

Cross your fingers! lol
Courtney

[Ann White]

I realize this may not be the most popular stance, but in this case I would ban her from the page. Patrick's right in that she's violating all kinds of policies and terms of use both from Facebook and your office. She's clearly not there to engage in any kind of meaningful conversation, and when I think about the responsibility of community management, I refuse to allow bullies or obnoxiously disruptive people into the forum.

I think she's given you ample reason to ban her, and if she truly cares about reaching out to the university, it should be done through personal interaction and not via Facebook. If she doesn't want to engage, you've done all you can.

[Matt Dana]

I agree. If she's being chronically disruptive, the best thing you can do is ban her. If she tries to come back with another account, ban that one too. It will take a lot more effort on her part than I assume it's worth to her to keep being a nuisance, and I doubt anyone else who follows your page will notice or care that she's gone.

[Courtney Smolen]

Thanks everyone for sharing. I really appreciate all of your responses and advice. Always a learning experience :)

[Patrick Burt]

Must be something about Veterans Day, we had a Facebook incident that same day.

I think your stance is a good one, and proactive open communication with the user and explaining why, definitely the correct approach.

However, I would only suggest one thing in addition to the really good suggestions everyone has posted. If the person did suggest that the original poster die, that can be considered a threat. We had a incident earlier this year where some one posted a threat and it was investigated by authorities. These are taken seriously by the police and are a violation of Facebook policy and I imagine your institution's policy. That alone would have earned a ban from our page and we would have reported it to Facebook and quite possibly local authorities. We also would have informed the person of this action as well.