A growing number of social media platforms are being “trolled” by bots and scammers. The larger your reach, the increased chance that you will be “hit.” A few trends include:
- Posts requesting “friends” (i.e., your comment caught my attention, and you look so beautiful in your profile picture, but it would be rude to request you as a friend so would you please send me a friend request?)
- Posts selling items (sweatshirts, banners, cups, etc.) with your organizations name on it but some generic logo or graphic
- “@Everyone you will be interested in this video or website”
- And the random emergency requests that used to be in emails, but have spread to socials, asking for money or gift cards to help your pastor, principal or director or your organization in general.
In addition to any anti-Catholic, negative or hateful comments that are posted, these all need to be hidden or deleted, and repeat offenders may need to be blocked. The good news is that when you block an account on Facebook, that blocks all the repeat offended posts on your site (so you do not have to go through each and every post they’ve made. Seriously, one such spammer posted 37 different posts in one hour and was easily removed!) If you need assistance with how to do these processes, feel free to contact Cindee Case, Social Media Minister, ccase@youngstowndiocese.org.
