Dagney and others -
There was a combination of over eagerness and over reaching on the part of several individuals. I don't really believe that anyone was maliciously trying to hijack any of our Facebook pages. I spoke to the one person who has a rather large group of followers on his own website and Facebook pages who clearly got overly excited and began auto referring all of the members on his site to ours. That was why we had the unbelievable influx of members even before we had barely mentioned our Facebook site on our website or here.
I was one of the first to notice that there might be a problem brewing, but it was late in the evening where I live and I was quite tired from traveling all day. Bo Juel Jensen noticed it as well and at first was overjoyed at what seemed to be an amazing number of new friends of AAWA after only 24 hours. Before I went to bed that night, I took one more look at some of the people who had "joined" our fan page and began to suspect that something was very, very wrong. There was nothing I could do about it at that late hour so went to bed.
The next morning I took a hard look at what was happening. Yes, there were some referrals by our own advisors and volunteers, but there were only about 50 in that category - not exceptionally high considering. But nearly 1000 had been referred or automatically "joined" to the group page by just a couple of other non-AAWA individuals and groups.
Among those who "joined" were several names that I did not recognize at all. But some I did and knew that they would not be expected to join a group like ours. There were others who were very evangelical and also some who I would consider to be Watchtower apologists who showed up on the list. Many others seemed to have no connection to JW activism or discussion whatsoever. I wondered why all of those types of persons would be joining our group.
Then I noticed as I scanned through the names that one person in particular seemed to be referring the majority of these unknowns. At that point I brought my concerns to the attention of the other advisors and the officers of AAWA. Their first reaction was that this was not necessarily a bad thing. After all, we welcomed support from every source and our doors were open to all. That is how I also felt some 12 hours before - but that morning I was literally panicked by the problem we were facing.
At that point Bo had to make a decision about what to do with our Facebook page and we all agreed to let him just go ahead and make it "open to all."
It was only after we took that step and the whole affair became news here on JWN that we started getting complaints that some of those people who had been "referred" or "recommended" to the site were unhappy that someone had done that without their knowledge. As it has been well discussed in several threads - several in which I personally have commented and tried my best to give an honest and straightforward explanation about what happened. We all have done our best to identify anyone who had their identities revealed on our site to be removed. On the other hand, and what some here have failed to realize, is that they must have had membership in other JW or religious oriented websites when this happened to have been "automatically" referred.
Yes, one of our volunteers did add and invite a few of her acquaintances. But again - this was a very small number. The most harm came from one other particular Facebook account not related to us at all.
Sometime over the weekend it was brought to our attention that another website had also placed our header and logo in their featured/header image slot. Someone wrote me and asked if we had joined forces with this other site? Shortly thereafter I got another FB message that showed the owner of that site was proudly sending out messages essentially notifying everyone of his new header image - almost an exact duplicate of AAWA's. About that time I started seeing more referrals coming into our own FB site indicating they too were being directed over from the offending site.
Let me explain that although I handle technical issues and am the webmaster for AAWA, I had very little to do with the Facebook page other than to set up the basic page, lay in some of the graphics and test it. At that point I turned it over to the others to do with it as they wanted. The "secret page" management was handled by others and I assumed that the settings were correct. I do not fault them and I should have stepped in and checked as well, but I failed to do so because at that point it was outside of my assigned duties. It was only later when so many "strangers" were joining the page that I realized that something was terribly wrong and felt I needed to speak up, warn the others, and take some responsibility on my own shoulders.
When we noticed that the other site was using our header and logo, one of us mentioned it on our private group site and a remark was made on the Facebook page. Shortly after, the offending site took down the original header and put up a very crappy version (looked like something from an old box camera) in its place.
At that point I messaged the owner of the other site, gave him my phone number and asked him to call me at home. He did and we talked. I requested that he immediately take down our logo and stop referring people to our site without their knowledge or permission. I'm not sure if he hung up on me or we were simply disconnected, but I now had his number on my cell phone. So I called him back. I could tell he was upset with me, but while I was on the phone he removed the crappy image of our logo and put up another image totally unrelated to AAWA - or even his own Facebook page. He agreed to stop sending new members to our site and indicated that he would notify all of his members that they might want to check our site and remove their names. Since then he has changed the status of his page to a more private setting.
While our conversation was a bit tense and not entirely friendly, I tried to make it clear that we did not consider him our enemy and appreciated his trying to help us get a good start, but going ahead on his own without checking with us had created problems for us and had offended and outed many FB users. I tried to explain to him that I considered him a friend, felt we both had similar goals, but there was a right way and a wrong way to assist our growth. He just "went ahead of Jehovah" - oops, I mean "AAWA" - and in doing so had caused us a great deal of embarrassment, grief, and cleanup work.
We've been closely watching our membership levels and so far they have remained steady at around 1325 members. So in spite of the complaints here on JWN about this fiasco, we have not seen any indications of a mass exodus of "offended" members, and any who have left have been immediately replaced by an equivalent number of new members. There has been only a trickle of any emails sent to us or through our website complaining about this situation, and most have been quite understanding about it all. It has only been here on JWN that complaints and accusations have been continuous and harsh toward us about this incident. If anyone still has a problem, email me at [email protected] and I'll see that it is immediately corrected.
Personally I don't think the offending Facebook administrator meant us any harm. He just embarrassed us and himself. I think he means well and I personally wish him the best. I hope that at sometime in the future we can find a common project to work on together and get past all of this.
Here is AAWA's official position on this incident:
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"It grieves us to know that harm was done to many people be being added against their will to AAWA's Facebook Page. To be honest, we were (at first) blown away by the response. We have set up more than one website, and most have remained secret with no one being added against their will. However, on the one page that did have problems we accept part of the blame. We needed to be more prepared and we weren't. You surprised us all. We certainly didn't expect a tidal wave coming at us within our first 48 hours.
"This has taught us a huge lesson we won't forget. We can't go back and undo what happened last week. In the future we will warn people about the dangers of joining any Internet website, including ours - and if anonymity is important to them, they need to have a second account that provides a cover for them.
"Again our sincerest apologies. We hope that in the future we can regain the trust that was lost due to this serious problem."
The Board of Directors and Advisors of AAWA
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I hope this answers all your questions. I've held nothing back in this post. We need to move on. AAWA has a lot of work to do in the coming weeks and months. We hope we have your support and good wishes. If not, then we will just have to face our tasks without your help.
Thanks again for JWN and the moderators for giving us this wonderful forum to share our exciting story and a chance to express our apologies.
Juan Viejo2
