Comments on: Five types of Facebook trolls, and what to do with them

Don Reisinger examines five Facebook trolls and how to deal with them when they start bothering you.

[Suomynona.Eno]

I've always been under the impression that Facebook caters well to young adults and above especially those who value some level of connections' control and certain degrees of anonymity? The way I see it the real probs would only start to rear its ugly head when "a friend of a friend's friend" starts poking about at people they should have known better not to. It's always been my policy that anyone on my list has an actual body, face and personality in real life and more importantly, someone I can really call or have at least met in my regular circle of real life people. This article only applies to those more adventurous to deal with "far more liberal" standards of online socializing nitpickings. As for myself, a few prior unpleasant encounters has taught me to choose the opposite approach.

[farker1]

this is the second time in a week that CNET has permitted a blogger to use the word troll wrong (the other was in the blog about journalism - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10114285-93.html?tag=mncol).

This is rather shocking, and explicitly suggests that CNET knows nothing about the Net, or editing, or either.

[professionaladventurer]

Myspace and Facebook have changed the meaning of the word "friend" and totality diluted it. I use Facebook to interact with REAL friends that live far from me, but so many other people just spam out their friendship to who ever will accept. To all the posters on here who do not get those spam/troll whatever friends, I guess you don't have much to show or are not good looking enough (or something), if I put up a photo of me with no shirt on I get a lot of spam friend requests, if I use a photo of a bear or something strange, I get nothing.

[idfubar]

Social networks are a useful tool for organizing one's life; if the type of requests you're getting make your feel uncomfortable maybe it's not the technology that's out of control - maybe YOU are...

[Brian_Lenhart]

Great post! I'd love to see a post on "defriending" etiquette. Some of my thoughts at the following link:

http://businessweekcoverstory.com/2008/12/15/i-dont-want-to-be-your-friend-anymore/

Take care, Brian

[LVGene]

Maybe this is some sort of a scam. Write a terrible flawed article. So us chumps will join CNet to correct this idiot?

[Dot_CM]

Facebook is just bad all around. Talk about fake plastic people. If anyone is a troll, it's those people who all flocked to it because of the over hyped publicity. The layout might be 'cleaner' than Myspace's but it's boring, not to mention bland! Most people aren't as friendly there either. I compare Facebook's popularity to that of the no carb diet a few years back. It'll soon fade. At least Myspace allows users to choose on an updated look or keep the old one...and to personalize your page is an added plus. I'd choose having fun, & meeting new and old friends over the Facebook trend. Joining and staying on Facebook is, in essence, becoming a troll oneself. No thanks.

[dominikmayer]

It all depends on how you use facebook. I think you limit yourself if you just use it as a platform to connect with your closest friends. That's why I don't like the term "friend" in this context. "Contact" would be better. The privacy levels allow you to finetune who can see and do what and I like to have this kind of automatically updating addressbook. It helps to stay in contact with the people I know, no matter how close they are. Maybe I want to contact someone in one or two years to ask for something or I find out we're in the same city and meet for a coffee. I know people that change their e-mail addresses like others change their shoes and it's hard to track them.

[bastiandantilus]

Gotta join those that disagree heavily with this article. These are not trolls, and your suggestions on how to deal with them are juvenile and borderline autistic, imho. Either someone is your friend or isn't, but also who you friend should reflect how you use facebook (or myspace or whatever). You advise both adding people to your friends because you want to up your friend count, and removing them because they aren't chatty enough. That's like deleting someone from your email address book because they haven't emailed you since Christmas.

I use social sites for social interaction, not to judge the quality or quantity of my friends. My suggestions for friend requests? Confirm people you know (unless you hate them), ignore people you don't know (spammers ?), and only remove people if you have a reason to (i.e. you didn't hate them before but now you do, or you no longer trust them with your profile information, or whatever). If you want to play games with your social sites, try the apps... not the friend request shuffle.

[Starsybyl]

Not only is this guy totally ignorant of what a troll is, he also comes off as incredibly pretentious and self-absorbed.
Seriously, one must have some massive balls to write an article about trolling when one doesn't even know the definition of the word.