By now, many of you are aware of the Facebookgate Redux. This is a continuation of the issue Brad Ward discovered back in 2008. And of course, we saw it for the class of 2014 as well. Companies are creating fake Facebook groups posing as institutions to market services to the students that join. The thing is, this is a problem we are likely to be stuck with for some time. If it isn’t housing, it’ll just be some other angle.  Trying to stop it is like crushing cockroaches. But, there are some things we can do to arm ourselves and protect our students. What’s more important to mention is that just because we are seeing this on Facebook, it is hardly limited to just that environment. What I’d like to go over are a handful of strategies to handle these problems.

Attack!

Of course, the most obvious strategy is to go on the offensive. In the case of RoomSurf, you can complain to Facebook on a couple issues. In some cases, it can be a violation of the TOS, since fake accounts are sometimes used to create the pages. That isn’t universally true, but you can investigate. You can also complain about copyright and trademark infringement, as they frequently appear to be using official logos and imagery.

Sidebar: A particular point that pissed me off about the logo usage was that the punk running RoomSurf had the audacity to say:

“When informed that several of the colleges — including Tufts, Northwestern and Oswego — told a New York Times reporter on Tuesday they did not authorize the use of their logos on his groups, he said he would gladly substitute a campus photo, ‘if they just want to send me a message.'”

Say it with me: It’s still infringement whether or not someone notifies you. Personally, that sort of willful disregard makes me hope some schools get together and file a lawsuit against him. But that’s vindictive thinking, and I digress.

The problem with the attack strategy is that it doesn’t work. They came back last year, and they came back this year. They pay random people on Craigslist to make the groups if they have to. It’s a game of whack-a-mole that ultimately distracts us from better solutions.

Fill the Gap

This is simple enough. Make your own groups, make them early, and make them clearly official. Pack them with information, pictures, events, and conversation from your admission folks. The trick is, if people see two Class of 2015 groups, it should be brutally clear which one is the real one. You could even try including a little “Official” banner/insert/watermark in your group image so that when they see them side by side in search results, the visual element helps immediately differentiate the groups. The same goes for group titles as well.

This isn’t a new idea. It was suggested the first time this issue came up. The trick is that you actually have to do it. Don’t just talk about it. Don’t set them up and walk away. Any good strategy involves engagement and cultivation. Maintenance. It will be much harder for the nefarious folks to make headway when you’ve already planted the seeds and prepared the farmland ahead of them.

Trojan Horse

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how much I like this one. But, it’s an option, so I’ll put it out there. You have student employees, yes? If not, admissions surely does. Have a student or even yourself join the fake group, and politely post a link to the real one, explaining that the fake group is not sanctioned and may not be protecting students’ information. Basically go in and spoil the party.

Why I’m on the fence about this: I hate giving any activity to the fake group at all. Plus, if they pay attention, they can just delete your post and ban you anyway. And while I can’t really explain it, given our other options, this tactic feels a little… dirty, negative. I think that’s ultimately because…

It’s a Teachable Moment

We’re colleges for heaven’s sake. This is the sort of thing we should be good at. Make sure students know which groups are official, and make it easy for them to find the information on your site. Build a gateway page that links to the official groups. Include the links in housing and orientation packets. Take five minutes to explain (in person) the reason to make sure that the group they join is the official one. When students come for campus visits, while trekking between buildings, have ambassadors explain the importance of checking groups you join. Show that you care about their safety. The reason kids join our groups is because they want to get involved and engage with us and their fellow students. They join the wrong ones when they don’t know any better. But their hearts are in the right place, so let’s make sure to help them out.

Your housing and admission offices can also point out that things like roommate finder services offered by third parties are not approved on campus. Let them know you would never ask for money to pair up students. This is a great opportunity to educate our students about how to be vigilant social media citizens and how to protect themselves.

Conclusions

There’s been some talk on the side channel about where we go from here – that blogging about it and getting in the news for it isn’t cutting it. I agree. We need to start putting forth some actual effort to counter the fake group creators. But ineffective or not, what we absolutely cannot do is stop talking about it. This isn’t an issue we can bury our heads in the sand over and ignore. There are always new people in our industry that don’t know these dangers, and veterans that simply need a reminder. This blog isn’t going to fix the problem, neither will any of the dozen others you will read. But you can bet that we’ll still be here, looking for new angles and tactics, keeping the issue visible, until we finally find that magic sauce.

Look, I know a lot of this is no brainer sort of stuff. And yet many of us aren’t doing a lot of it. We’re not going to stop the core problem by trying to cut them off at the knees. If it’s not Justin Gaither and RoomSurf, it’ll be someone else with some other service. The landscape is too big and too insecure to think we can “control” that aspect. What we can do is help people be smart. We can give them good resources. By being good community members ourselves, we’ll be doing our students and supporters the best service that can be expected.

This post was written by Michael Fienen