Hacked Facebook page haunts exiled newsman turned teacher

The page has my picture, my mother's obituary, but it's not me. And now it's posting gross stuff that could get the real me in trouble.

AI image created with Microsoft Designer from prompts written by the author.

Some scammers stole the Facebook Business Page I created years ago when I still stacked paragraphs for the local Gannett Outlet Store.

A business page is different from a standard profile. Most people use it to promote their business and inform customers about sales, hours, or closings.

In my last days hanging on during the journalism apocalypse, one of the many snake oils we drank in great gulps was the idea that social media would save us.

---

---

Journalists were encouraged to “build their brand.” That’s marketing talk. I hate it, but that became a part of reporters’ jobs around 2008 when Facebook was still fresh and Twitter, now X, was on the rise.

I built up an audience of about 6,000 followers on Facebook. I kept the page active after Gannett ended my career.

I changed the name to Daniel P. Finney Paragraph Stacker. It became the place where I shared my columns after newspaper life.

When I was unemployed and uninsured, I tore the meniscus in my left knee.

Readers and friends donated money to help cover the surgery cost and provide food during my recovery.

But then I got greedy. I got an offer from a group that looked legit. They wanted to run ads on my profile.

I was surviving on student loans while earning my teaching certificate in graduate school. I could always use a few extra bucks.

I foolishly followed their instructions and within a day, I lost access to the page.

I complained to Facebook. I filled out the forms about being hacked. I made complaints about intellectual property violations.

Nothing.

Trying to get customer service from Meta, the company that owns Facebook, is like trying to cut a diamond with a plastic spork.

I commented on a few posts on the page, trying to let people know this wasn’t me.

I was so desperate to regain control of the page that I paid a guy who said he could help me regain my access.

That, too, was a scam.

And it was a scam that hooked me twice.

You might be asking how I could be so dumb. This stuff seems like obvious fraud.

P.T. Barnum, the famed circus owner, reportedly said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

The digital age has sped up the production of suckers to nanoseconds.

All I can say in my defense is desperation makes fools of us all.

Most people who followed my Facebook Page knew me through my writing.

I enjoyed pretending I was still a newspaper columnist or a writer that mattered. I’m not. Maybe I never was, but transitions are difficult, and we do what we must to survive.

Eventually, I gave up on the page. I blocked and moved on with life.

Until last week.

That’s when emails and text messages started to pour in.

“What are you thinking?”

“Are you OK”

“It’s a bad look for you.”

The scofflaws who stole my page mostly post dull and stupid videos.

But occasionally they throw in some scantily clad woman jiggling in provocative ways.

That has happened enough that someone contacted my principal anonymously to note the content and that some of it was posted during the school day.

I explained to everyone that even though the page has my name on it, my face on it, my pictures, and some of my writing — it isn’t me.

I have no control and no route to get Facebook’s attention. I am powerless to stop it.

I’ve asked my news friends if they have any contacts at Meta. They don’t. Nobody does. Everything is done through electronic forms.

The current presidential administration wooed all the tech bros into his thrall. They all did away with fact-checking efforts. The crazy is impossible to stop, so let it flow, the billionaires who get fractionally richer every time someone shouts 9-11 was an inside job and they’re running a pedophilia ring out of a pizzeria.

Who cares if some mope in Des Moines who is just trying to survive has his reputation wrecked and his employment threatened? This country isn’t for ordinary citizens anymore.

I’m lucky. My principal listened to me. We documented the conversation and, hopefully, that will be the end of that.

But I know some people followed me as a columnist and still see my work here and elsewhere who will believe I’m a creep posting smut.

The page is gone, but parts of me remain. Mom 2.0’s obituary is on there. My selfie with Lisa Bluder, the great Iowa and Drake women’s basketball coach, is on there. Pictures of my family and friends are on there.

It looks like me. It has my name and self-chosen title, but it isn’t me.

My principal is reaching out to the district’s tech people. I’ve called some of my newspaper friends and old law enforcement sources.

I can’t afford a lawyer to write a cease-and-desist letter, but I’m looking into other options.

For the record, my true Facebook page is at facebook.com/newsmanone. Anything else on that site that has my name on it is fake. Report it. Unfollow the page. Block it.

And move on with your life.

That’s the only recourse left to me.

---

Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, but don’t hold that against them. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.