Are the trolls winning?

So I've had to enable comment moderation, not because I worry that any of my friends or family will make a comment I can't live with, but because I've been spammed recently and I'm tired of having to go in and delete the spam. I've reported it, but I don't have a lot of confidence that anything can or will be done about it. It's my understanding that the people who do this move from account to account to avoid having to deal with the consequences of their actions. I don't understand spam at all, whether it's left as a comment on a blog post or shows up as an annoying pop-up when I'm trying to read or watch something. Are there really enough people out there whose reaction to a pop-up for a cruise or an expensive handbag is, "Goodness, why didn't I think of that? That's exactly what I need/want!" Somehow I doubt it. Nevertheless, spam is here to stay and we all have to deal with it. For me, that means using comment moderation on my blog, at least for now.

Facebook madness...

Tonight I went onto Facebook to post my walking stats and when I went to my profile to see if I'd been successful, for some reason my family profile popped up. I glanced at it and noticed that it showed just 3 of my 4 chickadees: Alex, Kath, and Christo were there, but Michael was not. I hit the "Edit" button, and he showed up, only to disappear again when I went back to the full family profile.

Huh?!?!?!? 

I then noticed that his profile pic was missing, so I clicked on his name, only to see this message: "This account has been deactivated. Only you can see Michael on your family list. You can unfriend Michael if you like."

I have to admit I had a moment of absolute panic. Ridiculous, perhaps, but it's what I felt. And no, I did not feel like unfriending him; sheesh, I can't bear to remove the names of long lost friends from old address books! So instead of unfriending my son, I did what every good mom in this technologically advanced society does; I picked up my iPhone and texted him: "Hey, I saw that you deactivated your FB account; is everything OK?" In about 2 minutes, to my great relief, Mike texted me back. Everything is fine; he's just in the middle of moving halfway across the country again and taking a break from FB in the meantime.

Whew.

There are times I've come close to taking a break from FB myself, and I've had a number of friends do this before Mike did, but nevertheless, I always feel alarmed when a name disappears from my circle of FB friends. I always wonder if that person is OK, and so far, thank goodness, they always have been. This is the first time I've seen the option to unfriend someone with a deactivated account, though. That option strikes me as really weird, and horribly cold, but then, I do still have the names and addresses of people long gone from my life in my rolodex (remember those?) and address books. Instead of offering me the option to unfriend him, I wish FB would provide persons deactivating their accounts the option to notify friends and/or family that they're doing so. But that's probably way too old fashioned an idea for FB.