I was hesitant to write this story when the concept first came to my attention as I did not want to give people any ideas. I was hopeful that Facebook would make adjustments to this without anyone have to blow the whistle, but it’s been live for a little while now and there are no changes in sight.
According to Urban Dictionary, a Stitch Up is “a set up, a trick. If someone stitches you up, then they’re playing you for a fool. It’s often used when framing someone for a crime.”
That’s the door that Facebook has left open for their users. If someone wants to be funny or even harmful, all they need to do is post something, get comments and likes, then edit the post to something completely different. In the example above, I asked an offbeat question and a friend gave an appropriately offbeat response. Thanks to the new Facebook post editing feature, I could really mess with him if I wanted to by simply editing the post to say something like this…
“Do you believe that the Apollo 11 mission actually took people to the moon?”
It’s harmless, of course, but what if I made it even more nefarious…
“Did the Holocaust really happen?”
I could take it a step further…
“Do you believe in God?”
In each of these cases, I’ve changed the question to make Arnold’s response seem strange at the least and offensive in the extreme examples. If I were to “stitch up” Arnold, it could cause problems. This is a flaw and Facebook really needs to fix it before something really bad happens.
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Hat Tip to Arnold Tijerina. No, I will not stitch you up.
via Soshable | Social Media Blog http://soshable.com/facebook-editing-and-the-risk-of-the-stitch-up/
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