Facebook: Making Lives And Breaking Lives

There comes a time when our virtual idols, like Facebook, take on a God-like quality. Such is the case in two separate, but ultimately connected, incidents. One saved lives. The other destroyed one.

Since its inception, Facebook has been used to connect friends, political allies and organisations. And it’s also being used for charitable causes, as exhibited in Silicon Valley, where Second Harvest Food Bank employed its network to raise over $US10,000 for the area’s hungry. (Too bad this guy doesn’t live there.)

For every good deed done on Facebook, however, there seems to be one that’s more calamitous. Just ask Bozeman, Montana, copper Cody Anderson, who resigned this week because of his Facebook commentary, which claimed police officers such as himself had the right to arrest people for being “stupid” and boasted about “messing with people.”

Those remarks came into play in a lawsuit filed by a Bozeman resident who says he was falsely arrested. His lawsuit cites Anderson’s “stupid” comment as proof that the police department doesn’t respect the city’s citizens. Thus, Anderson’s career has come to an end.

The Facebook giveth and the Facebook taketh away. Respect it. Fear it. For it has the power to take you down.