Facebook users have been experiencing a whole lot of material that’s much more objectionable than the average status update. What’s being described as a coordinated attack has hit the social networking site, bringing with it images of pornography and graphic violence. It’s a low tech spreading method: somehow a link gets on to one person’s Facebook page, posted as a status update. That person’s Friends click on it, perhaps lured in by a salacious headline, and then THEY become the spreading agent. It’s clickjacking and besides self-propagating the links can contain malware too. And while Facebook says they’ve made a big push to stop this most recent wave and limit its reach, its hard to imagine that there’s much Facebook can do about these methods in the long term. As long as there are people who are curious about things, we’ll see this again.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
