Predatory Behavior Runs Rampant in Facebook’s Addiction Support Groups
> Marketers from the treatment center had to approve every post in the group, which gave them the first opportunity to privately message good candidates for their rehab and try to talk them into going to Windward in California. They needed that edge, Mendoza explained to me a few weeks ago, because they knew a Facebook group that big would be full of other marketers, waiting to swoop in as soon as a juicy message was public.<p>There is something uniquely... American about this comment. By that I mean that divorced from the ethics setting up large Facebook groups and using them to funnel patients into your addiction center is a <i>great</i> strategy, and it clearly works. It seems, to me at least, to make good business sense. That's not to say that the practice itself is unique to America, more that it's encouraged by the hyper capitalist 'profit above all else' that America espouses.<p>After taking a step backwards however then you're just exploiting/taking advantage of vulnerable people looking for help and using that to manipulate them into giving you money.