In giving my SMB social media talks, the topic of deliberate bad behavior always comes up.
“What keeps me from going on Yelp and trashing my competitor down the street?” is a typical question. Or “What if my sister-in-law writes a really nice review for me?”
My response is that we’re kind of living in the wild, wild west and that until some social norms grow up and we get marshals to enforce them people need to be prepared.
I talk about Jeff Jarvis’ “Dell Hell” posts that triggered massive waves that hammered Dell…but I talk about Jeff as the pebble that unleashed the avalanche – not as a ‘community organizer’ mau-mauing the corporations.
I’ve talked with friends about “social DDoS” attacks, where a few thousand people could swarm a social site and in effect trash the community there –