First, this rule should apply to everything you do on Facebook or anywhere else:
If the message tells you what to do, the person who created it thinks you are stupid and gullible. Don't prove them right. Do not press here, find 'share with all your friends' and share with all your friends. Do not 'type amen'. Do not be intimidated by 'only 2% of my friends have the heart to do this and I think I know who you are'. Do not see a name or brand and automatically share because you've see all of your friends sharing stuff from that name or brand and you want to be like or impress all of those friends because, believe me (and I'll explain below) your friends might very well be doing more damage than good.MOST IMPORTANTLY, accounts are being cloned. And it matters. This problem was widespread last election cycle and here we are, nearing another election, and it's happening again. This time, the people who do this are aware that some people (like ME) spent many hours of our time last election cycle warning people. We're on to them. So, we know they are observant enough to see how many people are more willing to FOLLOW THEM than they are to LISTEN TO US and created this scam to keep people who might have listened to us when we alert them that someone has cloned their account, or that the second friend request they just received from someone who is already their friend is a clone.
And it appears to be working. I see friends posting a status saying, "If you get a second friend request from me, accept it because I'm so great I need to be duplicated," or "What's the big deal?" or, "I'm too cool to be interested in this stuff." Fortunately, most of the people I've seen doing that are not politically involved. However, their decision to not be involved could hurt them in the long run, same as not bothering to care about politics or to vote is hurting them, and everyone else, in the long run.
Hopefully, when your real friends do receive a second friend request from what appears to be you, they will contact you - by phone, text, or message - and, in their own words instead of what is obviously a form-letter type communication that tells you to alert all of your friends that they too have been cloned, and ask if you sent that request. When I reported the at least a hundred cloned accounts to Facebook in the past, they asked me to provide a link to the real friend's account and to notify that friend. Facebook, responsibly, would not remove the duplicate account until the real friend verified to them that they had not created a second account for some reason.
The cloners are trying to get your friends list. What I was experiencing, since I am politically active and was moderating a number of election connected groups, was people from the opposition trying to get into closed political groups. Once in, they gradually start posting negative things about the candidate/group - planting negative seeds and/or posting misinformation or links to dishonest articles. This is one of the slier, less obvious components of the "fake news" problem. But it probably isn't always political. People who want your friends list for any reason can see how easily this works and do the same.
Sometimes -- enough times to scare anyone who studies gullibility and thoughtless sharing -- they managed to worm their way into moderating groups and then stole the groups. They blocked the person who created/owned the group, removed moderator status from the real moderators, and had complete control. So, there's a group with the name Democrat/Democratic (or a candidate) in the title, taken over by people who only mean to destroy it/them.
THIS MATTERS. Even if you think you don't care that your account has been cloned, someone might be doing this in your name and image.
The irony here is that I started warning people about cloned accounts during the last election cycle. I explained what was happening, why it was happening, and the danger of not paying attention. And I reported, on my Facebook page and in my groups, that I had reported to Facebook as well as personally to each of my friends when I received friend requests from the accounts cloned to look like them. That happened at least a hundred times. And notifying my friends, going back and forth to explain to each what was happening if they didn't already know because they don't read what I post, as well as reporting to Facebook one hundred times - takes some time. I warned, on my page and in multiple groups, at least 600 friends and tens of thousands of people. Again, this time, as soon as the scam message started hitting my inbox,I warned more than 600 people on my page. And, again, very few people read or cared if they did read, my message. So, I've had to type messages on dozens of their statuses that show incomplete or no understanding of the problem even though I spent my time explaining.
This disregard for warnings is exactly why we have scammers and fake news and misinformation - and the end result is that our country is dying.
This is not a Facebook cloning problem. This is a rote sharing/following problem. Brands are doing the same. MoveOn, Other 98%, Occupy Democrats (this one makes my brain and heart hurt more than any other because the occupy movement was not a group of people who loved Wall Street - it was about destroying Wall Street, so it couldn't be more obvious) . . . They flood the internet with things that everyone will agree with - kitties are cute, sunshine is nice, we hate when toilets overflow, etc. Share if you agree. And everyone mindlessly shares, because, well, it's important for all of their friends to know that they, too, like kitties and sunshine but hate feces on their floors. Then, as elections approach, the messages get more political. And in the final, important time, they get subliminally more controlling. The biggest, most damaging example, was the 'vote blue no matter who' meme that some of these groups started circulating during the Democratic Party primary for the 2016 race. Knowing that the Sanders camp had signed a Bernie or Bust pledge that stated they would hand the election to Republicans to, their words, teach the Democratic Party a lesson, this meme subliminally made many people believe that a vote for Sanders might be safer. This is disgustingly manipulative and dangerous. And many people who should have known better continued to share that meme instead of sharing the - VOTE HILLARY because she's more qualified. (Obviously, I'm using this example because it's the one that means most to me. Insert anything you care about and imagine this happening.) Every time you share their brands, you are helping them reach more people, and their brand get into the 'rote sharing' rotation, which could hurt your cause in the end.
I said somewhere way up there that I'd bring this back to friends doing more damage than good. Today, two days AFTER Kavanaugh was confirmed, some of my friends are sharing 'this is how we think certain Senators might vote' articles. Because their friends shared it today, or because the headline didn't clue them in that this is what the article was about and they didn't even read the article.
