Polish Priest Announces on his Facebook Page that Halloween is Harmful and Should Be Abolished

Polish priest Pawel Zawada has recently posted on his FB page that Halloween is a Satan’s night and those who would be celebrating it on 31 October are going to be doomed.  He also claims that in Poland it is on Halloween that Satanists provide sacrifices during their black masses.  The priest has as many as 934 Fecebook friends.

In Poland he is not the only one who thinks like that. Poland is predominantly a Catholic country and many have a similar point of view. Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz, for example, claims that Halloween promotes “occult and magic” and therefore is against the teaching of the Catholic Church.   

In Poland Halloween is a new tradition. Since 1989, i.e. the Fall of the Iron Curtain, Poles have been celebrating All Saints’ Day (on 1 November).

Max Schrems vs. Facebook

Although Facebook has many proponents, a great number of them find at least something annoying about this social network.  A 24-year-old student from Austria, Max Schrems, finds the whole idea of Facebook not only annoying, but against the law.  According to Schrems FB makes illegal use of its users’ private data.

Max Schrems got interested by this dark side of Facebook last year, when he came for a one-semester student exchange to Santa Clara University, US. Then, his professor invited Facebook privacy lawyer Ed Palmieri to give a speech to the class. Schrems was shocked that the lawyer had little idea about how severe data protection laws are in Europe. He decided to write his thesis about Fecebook not understanding Europe’s privacy law. While making research for his paper, Max found out that Faceboook  owns hundreds-of-pages-long acts about one user and keeps data even about those who signed out from FB. After his come back to Austria, he publicized his findings online. Now this is a case for Congress.  

Medvedev Urges Facebook CEO to Open a New Research Centre in Moscow

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, visited Russia on his world tour, on which he searches talented programmers. In Moscow Zuckerberg talked to Dmitry Medvedev. Russia’s PM was convincing FB CEO not to lure away Russian programmers but to open a research centre in Moscow.

Medvedev  is known for being a fan of this kind of social networks. "I have a Facebook page myself," he told Zuckerberg.

There are approximately 9 million Faceboook users in Russia. Much more famous is Russia’s domestic VK, with around 34 million fans.

Kaspersky Lab and Facebook to fight together for safer social networking

Kaspersky Lab and Facebook started to cooperate in order to make social networking safer. Kaspersky Lab is supposed to inform Faceboook about the most recent software threats. The data will be used to protect Facebook users from opening malicious websites. Additionally, All the Fecebook users will have the opportunity to test exclusive free six-month subscription for the Kaspersky Lab’s security products.

Facebook to help Croatia win the qualifier

It’s unbelievable! The coach of Croatia football team, Igor Sztimac (45 years old) turned to fans for advice in an unusual way, via Facebook. He wanted them to help him beat Wales in a qualifier for 2014 World Cup. The fans are supposed to tell him the squad and tactics for this match. 

“I am opening a discussion regarding Tuesday's match against Wales. What is your ideal team for that match? What system would you apply against Wales? 4-3-3? Bring it on!” Stimać wrote on his Facebook page.

Croatia takes second position in their World Cup qualifying Group A. Will Fecebook fans help the team to become the group leader?

1 billion Facebook users

Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that 1 billion people use Facebook monthly. Since its launch in February 2004, Facebook has recorded 1.13 trillion Likes, 140.3 billion friend connections and 219 billion shared photos. About 600 million people use Faceboook's mobile platform, and one in 10 uses only mobile to access it.
As a result Mark Zuckerberg has become one of the richest Americans. His fortune is estimated at 8.1 billion dollars. In his Facebook timeline, Zuckerberg wrote: “Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life. I am committed to working every day to make Fecebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.”

Facebook invitation for a bloody birthday

It was supposed to be an unforgettable birthday. For sure this day will remain in the memory of Melanie Zwama (16 years old), the jubilate, and the whole Dutch town of Haren.

By creating a Fecebook event, Melanie invited her friends for a birthday party. Unfortunately, she made the event open, not private. As a result, the invitation was received by some 30,000 people, i.e. all the Facebook friends of Melanie’s friends. Reports said up to 6,000 people showed up at the party. Interesting is the fact that the town is populated only by 18,000!

Disturbances broke out. As many as six people had been hurt (three of whom seriously), shops vandalized, street signs damaged and a car set on fire by the time riot police arrived. There were at least 20 arrests.

A teenager kills a friend for posting derogatory comments on Facebook

Children kill children. In Holland, a 15-year-old girl decided to kill her best friend, Joyce Hau, who had been posting derogatory comments about her on Facebook. Together with her boyfriend, she hired a 14-year-old hitman, whom she paid less than 100 euro for stabbing Joyce. 

Nobody knows why Joyce Hau began to post these awful comments about her friend, Polly. There are speculations she was jealous about Polly’s boyfriend and spread gossip that her friend was having sex with many men.

Joyce had been posting such comments for several weeks. Polly and her boyfriend could not stand it and decided to kill Joyce. They hired Jinhua to kill Joyce and threatened him that if he did not kill her or if he told somebody about the murder, they would kill him. They contacted him also via Facebook. The worst has happened – Jinhua stabbed Joyce and hurt her father. 

The court sentenced the teenage murderer for a year in jail. It is the maximum sentence possible in the Netherlands for a minor after the horrific murder. Joyce’s father blames Fecebook and other similar social networks for this situation.

Facebook purging fake and double accounts

In August Facebook announced that as many as 83 million created accounts are fake or double. Lately, it has begun to purge them. The process resulted in some fan pages losing thousands of fans and the one that suffered the greatest loss was Zynga’s Texas HoldEm Poker (200 thousand fans). It seems a lot, but in fact this drop equaled only roughly 0,3% of the more than 65 million poker fans.  

Among other fan pages that lost the most Likes were: CityVille (72 thousand), Lady Gaga (65 thousand), Rihanna (49 thousand) and Shakira (48 thousand).  

Obviously the drop of Likes is only an apparent loss for Faceboook fan pages. Thanks to the purge of the fake and double accounts, admins will get to know the real number of their followers and thus –  plausible statistics. 

Every fifth Facebook user plays Farmville

The number of Facebook users playing Farmville exceeded 80 million monthly. Every day, however, the game is played by approximately 30 million Internauts. 

Farmville has been becoming more and more popular. The fact that it is played by 80 million people means that monthly every fifth Faceboook users uses this app.

In 2009 Zynga, the company that created both Farmville and other Facebook games, like Mafia Wars, estimated that its games were played by 200 million Internauts monthly. The company was then valued at $1 billion. Now it is $7 billion.

Addicted to Facebook

Genes are to blamed for women’s obsession with Facebook, Twitter and online shopping. Scientists say that the addiction to Internet, just like the addition to nicotine, is hereditary and most often concerns women.  

The way we look and behave is determined by our genes. 

Genes; however, are also responsible for our additions, like our addition to alcohol or Internet. Christian Montag from the University of Bonn claims that “Internet addiction is not a figment of our imagination. Researchers and therapists are increasingly closing in on it.”

Scientists from Bonn interviewed 843 people about their Internet habits. The results showed that as many as 132 men and women were addicted to Internet. They admitted that they think about Internet all day and the lack of the Internet access causes their poor state of mind, irritation and outbursts of anger.

The next step of the research was to examine genetic variants of those 132 people. 

It turned out that many of them had the same genetic variant, which was also responsible for nicotine addiction. “Within the group of subjects exhibiting problematic Internet behavior, this variant occurs more frequently – particularly in women.” And added that this phenomenon “could be linked to a subgroup using social networks like Facebook.”

Facebook – to stalk or not to stalk?

More than a half of Facebook users, by means of this social network, stalk their ex-partners. Specialists claim that such a behavior may badly affect mental health of jealous ex-boyfriends or girlfriends.  

The recent studies show that by stalking their ex-partners, Internet users risk having mental problems. Psychologists stress that dwelling on the past and the inability to handle the break-up may cause significant mental disorders.    

Brunel University psychologist Tara Marshall admits that stalking was in the past much more difficult than it is nowadays. There was no Internet, so it was harder to find out what our ex-partner was doing at the given moment or who he or she was dating. Therefore, it was easier to come to terms with the break-up.

However, the longer we stay friends with our ex-partner (either in the real life or on Facebook), the harder it is for us to deal with the break-up. According to Tara Marshall, “Facebook may furnish information about an ex-partner that only intensifies heartbreak.” She claims that we should avoid our former partners, both offline and online, for it is “the best remedy for healing a broken heart.”