I split this into a couple posts because it’s a bit long.

The Pitch

So someone (let’s not point any fingers) “suggested” I might like “How to know who blocked me ?”, a random Facebook Page. Now, ignoring the bad grammar, I took a look anyway. What we have is this lovely set of instructions:

OK, OK, wait… Those are the instructions? Seriously? Let’s point out a few reasons why you probably shouldn’t follow those instructions:

  1. Haven’t you ever received an e-mail with a link (like an e-card, maybe)? It’s always “Click link, or try copying this URL into your browser”. Why are these instructions “backwards”?
  2. What kind of crazy jibberish link is that? OK, so to a lot of people, anything on a computer is jibberish, but this one’s a whole different level of jibberish.
  3. It starts with “javascript:”!

So you don’t know what that last point means? Basically, the part of the URI before the colon defines the protocol the browser uses to communicate with a server (the remote end). “http://” is a regular website, “https://” is a secure website, etc. On the other hand, “javascript:” means “treat the rest of the URI as JavaScript code”. So by entering that code, you’re really making the browser do who-knows-what. Granted, the instruction did say that it’s code, and the step is to “Invite your friends”, but why doesn’t it use Facebook’s standard invite display?

Many questions and oddities means you probably shouldn’t do it. But not everyone notices those sorts of things.