Punk'd
Groups Horror: What Mark Zuckerberg's Man Boy Love means for your Facebookfuture
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a member of Man Boy Love?
Thursday blogger Michael Arrington added Zuckerberg (his Facebook friend) to the Facebook group "North American Man Boy Love Association" (NAMBLA). Facebook's new Groups feature allows users to add their friends to various "friend groups" which can be open, closed, or secret. Though the tool was designed to make the social networking site more user-friendly, some are upset that friends can add them to groups without their permission.
That's what happened to Zuckerberg with NAMBLA.
Zuckerberg quickly removed himself from the NAMBLA group, leaving a Facebook comment, "That's why it's so easy to remove yourself from groups :)"
Once you've removed yourself from a group you can click "unsubscribe" and block that particular friend's ability to add you to any future groups. When Zuckerberg left NAMBLA he also "unsubscribed" Arrington.
Essentially the new Groups are similar to the Lists feature on your privacy settings. If you're like me, then you've created at least three of these lists. Lists are handy when you want to filter what certain people can view on your profile. For instance, my cousin twice-removed can see my profile photos, but not my tagged photos. My uncle can view my work information, but not my status updates.
(They're both on my list titled, "People Who Don't Know that I Drink.")
Unlike lists, the friends you add to a group will receive an email notifying them of their group membership. Other Facebook users will be able to see the group (unless the group is secret). If the group is open, users will be able to join the group you've created.
Unsure on what to do with the new feature? Well here are some lists I plan on creating in order to organize my hundreds of Facebook friends and streamline my social networking.
1. Ex-boyfriends: sending this group one desperate message will save a lot of time. Attempting to drunkenly e-mail or Facebook chat each one of them individually gets difficult.
2. Ex-boyfriends' ex-girlfriends
3. Frenemies: It's important to keep tabs on your frenemies. Are they skinnier than you? More successful? Happier? If so, use this as thinspiration. If not then bask in the schadenfreude.
3. Bitches who send me hate mail: this includes all of group two and three but is not mutually exclusive.
4. People who invite me to lame events: I can't wait to send this group a message that just reads "STOP." Although the great thing about groups is that adding someone to a group is a message in and of itself.