Bloodbath in Social Networking sites: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Eight years ago, when the young chief executive officer of Facebook, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg founded the enterprise called Facebook in 2004, little did he knew that some deaths would soon be associated with the work of his hands, let alone globally. 
Although the Harvard undergraduate student then must be smiling to the banks with over 500 million monthly users worldwide, the outcome of news filtering globally suggest that Facebook has cause or have been on the root of several deaths, directly or indirectly.

This is not to say that it has all been bad-news. Yet, for some, Facebook is ever the best of things to happen on the social media networks. Some have gotten into good relations that resulted into marriage and they are living happily.

Of the many good sides of social media is reconnecting old friends and new ones alike. One of such is the recent get together organized by members of Matured Minds (MM), a group formed on facebook. Members of the group cut across various professions of Nigerians including universities’ students, living in the country and the Diaspora. Top personalities include former governorship candidate of Lagos, Jimi Agbaje, General Manager Raypower, Abuja, Kunle Adewale among others.

DigitalSENSE News gathered that some members of the group actually flew in from US, Ghana while others journey down to Lagos from other parts of the country for the get-together.

DigitalSENSE News investigations showed that for those who are still yet to reach the crystal of their friendship founded on social media, especially the Facebook, when scenes like that of a Nigerian young lady, a 24-year-old Ms Cynthia Udoka Valerie Osokogu, a post-graduate student of the University of Nassarawa, whose Facebook friend lured, raped and eventually killed in the company of an accomplice.

This spans from bulling of young pupils to the actually killing adults, which some social media watchers have described as cyber-jealousy.

In what recorded its first case with the death of 31-year old Ms Hayley Jones and mother of four, whose only sin was for changing her relationship status from “married” to “single” in over 10 years relationship on March 2, 2007. This was coupled with the claims she spent more time online, thus forcing the husband, Mr. Brain Lewis to think she was dating someone else, and he ended up strangling her 10 days after.

Then records have it that in May 2008, just a little above a year after Hayley Jones death, the demise of Sarah Richardson’s case came to the limelight.

Hayley may not be alone in this crime as another woman, Sarah Edward Richardson, 26 took a decision that was very costly by changing status from ‘married’ to ‘single’ after actually separated and even moved out to her parents house, where Edward killed her for the sake of cyber jealousy.

Another report has it that a teenager shot the father for banning him from usage of social media, recently.

In 2008, a15-year-old Hughstan Schlicker’s parents banned him from using MySpace, he killed his dad with a 12-gauge shotgun and, most likely, deleted him from his Top 8.

And if you think a Facebook quarrel cannot cause or lead to very disturbing situations, well you could be wrong, as quarrel between Torrie Lynn Emery, 23, and Alesha Abernathy, 21, led to a deadly high-speed car chase. Yet the dude or youngman they were fighting over has been in prison for over a year before the incident.

As at February 10, 2012, a Mountain City, Tennessee couple, were shot dead in their home allegedly for “unfriending” someone on Facebook, social network platform. The victims, Billy Clay Payne Jr. and Billie Jean Hayworth, were reported to had recently unfriended Jenelle Potter on Facebook.

United Kingdom based AllVoices reported from Gloucester, that a 15-year old Holly Grogan was tormented and tortured by bullies at school she changed schools to try and get away from the bullies. Despite changing school the bulling persisted and she has to kill herself on Wednesday September 16, 2009, by entering a dual carriageway and jumping 30feet from a road bridge that was near her home. After the fall she was hit by passing traffic and died.

On the number of deaths associated with Facebook, a man who just described himself as Mr. Dan, noted it’s extremely very easy to block people and delete peoples comments on Facebook, so why commit suicide or take kill one another. It’s better, he said, to say Facebook is not responsible for people who commit suicide from bullying on Facebook, but themselves.

Meanwhile, there is a “Report a Deceased Person’s Profile” on Facebook which welcomes you with a note; that under penalty of perjury, this form is solely for the reporting of a deceased person to memorialise.

The person reporting is expected to submit the Full name, as it’s listed on the FB account, electronic mail addresses listed on the account, Web address (URL) of the profile you’d like to report, relationship to this person; Immediate family (spouse, parent, sibling, child), Extended family (grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin), Non-family (friend, colleague, classmate), other requirement for this submission comprise of Proof of death, usually obtained from the coroner or obituary, news article, then action could be requested for the memorialize account.

For Nigerian users on Facebook, we pray that it does not get to these level of unchecking a button attracting death warrant, may be Facebook should update the social platform in a way that if one is now friend with Joe, it could be seen by all and sundry, but when unfriended, it should only be seen by the friend or person deactivating the friendship.

As it were, aside the case of Cynthia, most other issues are bulling on Facebook and death sentence for unfriending some. Even as Nigeria’s cyberlaw needs to be on stream to assist in remodeling its domain and not when all things have gone soar.

Remmy Nweke

... Making SENSE of digital revolution!