In many cases, becoming a social media admin is a position that is strictly volunteer, and one must understand and be able to spot a problem a mile away. For instance, if you yourself decides to become an admin for a group with over twenty thousand people, you must remember something very important. You must stay active and vigilant, because if you think being an admin is something that is just going to take care of itself and you don't have to do a single thing, you may want to think again. Scammers, fraudsters, spammers, and more will take over faster than you think.
Spammers are the ones that appear the most in a group. Many of these posts contain fake news articles of celebrity deaths, random babble that has no context, videos that are mundane and lack any meaning except just to be there, and worst of them all, groups of people showing graphic depictions of adult nature that would not appear on television. Many groups exist that even if you report the content to the group admins; the admins are simply not there and the spam runs rampant. Fraudsters and scammers are some of the worst and you have to look out for them the most.
One thing we need in our small towns is jobs and the scammers and fraudsters know it, many of which will impersonate Amazon and create job listings for candy box packaging and fruit basket assembly. These scammers would have their victim enter a website that was created using Google’s website development platform. Next, the victim would enter their name, address, phone number, and their social security number. The scammers will never contact you because they now have everything they need to impersonate you and steal your identity. There are also fraudsters that will simply put up a “if you can read this number, type it in the comments for a gift” scam, but not as thought out as the fake job listings and are often ignored by the scammer themselves; however, if you see it, its best to just avoid it all together. Scammers also like to hide in the group’s events section. If you as an admin see anything like that, then just select the option to delete post and ban user.
Another thing to note would be the stay at home job listings. These are real people that don’t realize they have been roped into one of the fastest growing scams that can and will dupe a lot of people. These people will offer Stay at Home jobs that do not require you to clock into a physical location. The positions range anywhere from payroll management to telecommunications. Here is the scam, ask who the business you’d be working for is. You'll find out that the business is either not in the United States of America or the business never authorized the job listing in the first place. Then again, the person on the other end of the scam may refuse to tell you the business the listing was authorized by. As an admin, you should just ban the person and not deal with the possibilities of one of your members getting scammed.
If you ever decide to become an admin for a group, there are three things you should start out with.
The first thing you should do, go to group settings and turn on post approval. This will stop all incoming scam and spam posts. The second thing you should do is set up your admin assist feature to scan each incoming post and delete it. Many parameters for the admin assist have been set up by Facebook so it's as simple as selecting the premade parameter and adding it to your admin assist. The final thing is to scan the incoming posts for scams and approve all of the real listings your users are trying to post. Scanning the incoming posts is the main thing you would be doing and would take less than ten minutes to do each day.
In the worst case scenario, an admin can permanently lock the group to all new users and the user would need to ask to join the group and wait for approval. This will actively stop all new scam posting accounts, but it's a decision that is irreversible and the admin must be absolutely sure that it is the only course of action that can be taken and that there are no alternatives.
What if an admin is absent and the group is without protection? One should reach out to that specific group to see if an admin would accept the request to allow one to join the group as an admin. If there is no response from any of the admins, one should report the group to Facebook until Facebook decides to hold the admins accountable and ultimately delete the group all together. It is the admin’s responsibility to take care of his or her groups and should be held accountable for his or her inactions.
In conclusion, if you want to become an admin, it's a responsibility you must keep up with, and if you can't keep the group up and running, you should either find someone to take over or help out or terminate the group by selecting the group’s “Archive Group” button. Before making that decision, give it your all and see your group shine with people who are grateful to have a group they can interact with without the possibility of getting scammed.
