Surge in Facebook membership requests

[Bamagirl]

I definitely agree it is a concern. It’s gone from a few new member requests per week to over 100 so far this month. Many appear to be legitimate fans. But many have only joined FB recently, and yet have thousands of “friends” and belong to hundreds of other FB groups. They are from a wide variety of countries, so I don’t see how this could be a coordinated thing. But it is puzzling and does cause us to wonder the best way to handle it.
I am wondering if we should make the group private. That way, we can still set it so people can find the group and request to join. But only members would be able to see who the other members are.
Any thoughts any of you have are welcome!

[Scruffydog777]

Originally Posted by Bamagirl

I definitely agree it is a concern. It’s gone from a few new member requests per week to over 100 so far this month. Many appear to be legitimate fans. But many have only joined FB recently, and yet have thousands of “friends” and belong to hundreds of other FB groups. They are from a wide variety of countries, so I don’t see how this could be a coordinated thing. But it is puzzling and does cause us to wonder the best way to handle it.
I am wondering if we should make the group private. That way, we can still set it so people can find the group and request to join. But only members would be able to see who the other members are.
Any thoughts any of you have are welcome!

I would think CleverCowboy would have some thoughts on this.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

I would think CleverCowboy would have some thoughts on this.

I do have some thoughts on this.

As you two should know by now, I am scarce on FaceBook. If it weren't for family and close friends, I would have closed it long ago. I have no Twitter account and the only reason I have an Instagram account is because of Alizee

Social media used to be interesting and fun, but it has turned into a hostile place and the targeted marketing is annoying. I have a lot of privacy concerns with social media as well.

That being said, I still follow the news surrounding social media and have read articles about the increasing number of fake FB accounts attacking FB groups. Bots. It's mainly for spamming and profile harvesting so it's not overtly destructive, but managing the requests have to be time consuming.

I like Bamagirl's idea of going private. I did request access to a private group on FB (Ohio fishing group). It asked me why I am interested in joining the group and a place to checkmark if I agree with the group regulations. This simple exercise is similar to what we do on AAm, asking a new member to request being fully activated in the chat box. It quickly filters out the bots.

[Bamagirl]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

That being said, I still follow the news surrounding social media and have read articles about the increasing number of fake FB accounts attacking FB groups. Bots. It's mainly for spamming and profile harvesting so it's not overtly destructive, but managing the requests have to be time consuming.

I like Bamagirl's idea of going private. I did request access to a private group on FB (Ohio fishing group). It asked me why I am interested in joining the group and a place to checkmark if I agree with the group regulations. This simple exercise is similar to what we do on AAm, asking a new member to request being fully activated in the chat box. It quickly filters out the bots.

We can easily require people asking to join the group to answer a few basic questions. I belong to a few FB groups (for sports and also some history and literature groups) and most of them do that. Are we all in agreement to set this up? I’ll be glad to do it.