If you’re a member of many groups on Facebook, you may have noticed something odd in the last 24 hours. Facebook Group admins are changing their privacy settings from either “public” or “closed” to “secret”.
Public groups mean anyone can join. Closed means anyone can request to join and must be accepted. Secret means invisible, so no one can see the group or request to join it – but you can be added by an existing member.
So why are so many groups simultaneously going secret?
As it turns out, a number of high profile Facebook Groups are being targeted by mass reporting attacks in order to get them taken down. Mass reporting attacks are where attackers post lots of content to a group – content that violates Facebook’s community standards. Then the attackers use other accounts to report that content, with the aim of getting the group taken down by Facebook.
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Facebook has confirmed that this is indeed happening. A spokesperson for the site told Mashable…
We removed several Groups from Facebook after detecting content that violated our policies. We since discovered that this content was posted to sabotage legitimate, non-violating Groups. We’re working to restore any Groups affected and to prevent this from happening again.
Popular Facebook Groups that appear to have been targeted all appear to be in similar niches, and that is the posting and sharing of online memes. One such group that was removed from Facebook is the “crossovers nobody asked for” group with nearly half a million members. That group, as Facebook promised, has since been restored.
This is what we know to be true and verified so far. The rest of how and why this is happening is unverified, with only words on the grapevine and the usual Internet whispers fueling rumours.
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One such rumour is that the people behind the mass reporting attacks belong to a collective called the Indonesian Reporting Commission, who deliberately targeted groups that frequently post content that the collective found offensive.
Other rumours claim to depict an apology by a member (or leader) of that collective apologising for the mass reporting attacks. Other rumours claim the apology was the result of threats, while other rumours claim that members of the Indonesian Reporting Commission have been physically attacked.
But none of this is verified as we speak.
However, warnings about the mass reporting attacks have spread through social media like wildfire, leading many group admins into changing the group privacy settings to secret in a bid to protect them, since doing so makes the group invisible to everyone who isn’t already a member.
Of course the question many an admin is asking right now is whether this is still (or will continue to be) a risk? While mass reporting attacks are real, they do require lots of effort on behalf of the attacker, especially to remove larger groups. And Facebook has demonstrated that it can detect and reverse the effects of these attacks, and will continue to work on preventing them, especially since this year’s F8 conference was in part devoted to how Facebook is going to emphasize and expand Facebook Groups going forward.
We recommend group admins that are worried keep a close eye on content that is posted on their groups and consider changing their settings away from “public” so new members have to request to join.
One useful tip is to look at the “Joined Facebook” date when accepting new members. Troll or fake accounts tend to have only joined Facebook in the last handful of days.
If any new developments come to light, we’ll add them here.