- Target:
- Region:
- United States of America
Are you ever annoyed by fake profiles spamming the Facebook groups you belong to? Do you like scrolling over and over again through posts about car detailing, duct cleaning, a rich prince giving away money to you, working from home for $60 per hour? Did all those too-good-to-be-true posts come to fruition? Never! Geo-blocking is the solution to all these problems. If you would like to make a change, please sign the petition.
Every computer has an IP address assigned when connected to the internet. This number, and cookie information, reveal your location, among many other things, and each website owner has the ability to know the city you are from, the computer you are using, the operating system, the screen resolution and so on.
This is old technology, invented around 40 years ago, and Facebook has the technology to pinpoint the user's exact location easily because the company uses it every day for precise ad targeting.
What is the problem?
Let's imagine you create a Facebook group or join one. Let's assume it's about "chess players in your neighborhood/city". You join it, a few neighbors join it and all is good, right? Well, no! Immediately you get users from all over the world flooding your group and you end up having fake or malicious users from Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Somalia, China, Philippines, Russia pretending to be your neighbors and posting random stuff. Sometimes innocent but annoying spam posts but most often fake posts which redirect you to websites harvesting your personal data or injecting viruses into your computer.
A simple option letting you make your group visible only to your preselected area, city, state or country would make Facebook a much better place. Let's face the truth: a group named "skateboard lovers of San Francisco" doesn't need spammers from all over the globe.
Key benefits to geoblocking:
1. An enormous increase in online safety.
2. Less internet traffic on a global scale means less energy wasted (good for the planet)
3. A much nicer user experience
4. Easier to find information you want when you don't need to scroll through scam and endless duct cleaning posts.
5. Local groups are truly local and safe from random internet users located 10 thousand miles away.
Technically speaking, Facebook acts as an accessory by facilitating crime. That's a punishable offense but nobody cares. Let's put an end to it.
This option is very easy to implement. As mentioned before, it already exists for Facebook ads, and has been available since the beginnings of the internet.
Please sing the petition and let's make Facebook a safer place for us and our friends or elderly parents.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The Asking Facebook to enable geoblocking for groups petition to Facebook was written by Michael Jedrak and is in the category Science & Technology at GoPetition.