In the blogosphere there are some horror stories told about user who getting banned from the Google+ network because they have behaved wrong. But what does this mean, wrong behavior in a social network?
Let us go a step backward and describe the user pattern itself. A user is visiting each day a new website and posts a comment to the website. Then he writes down in a file the URL he has visited plus a short comment if the website was a nice one or not. After one month the user has posted 30 comments and he puts the url list with 30 entries to his blog.
Now we have to ask how the other side will judge about this behavior. The owner of the individual blogs will get happy because they have found in their inbox a new comment. That means, the will judge that the behavior of the user was right. And another user will read the blog post with the 30 url he will recognize that the list looks the same like a so called linkblog. It is the logfile a person who has visited the internet and notes his experience. Because the reader will visit also one of the website because it sounds interesting.
From an abstract point of view. in the described scenario the fictional user has created 30 comments which are welcomed by the blog owner and he has created a linkblog which is was perceived as interesting. Which person in the loop should ban the user for this behaivor? Right, nobody will have a problem with it. The descirbed behavior wasn't wrong but it was the best practice method to make the community happy.
What will happen, if the textfile with the 30 URLs is not posted in the own blog but into a Google+ group? Is that a reason for banning a user? No it is not. Posting a linkblog direct into a social network is the desired behavior. It allows other others to visit the website as well and comment their impression. A playlist of carefully selected URLs is useful content. What will happen to the user is not that he gets banned but he will receive likes.
I'm not sure under which conditions a user can be banned from a Google+ group. But the described behavior which contains of posting on blogs and make a note in a list, won't result into a ban. So the assumption is, that stories which are told that the users get banned because they have made something wrong are fake news. They are told to protect the secret of how social media is working.
Let me give an example. Suppose somebody is not familiar with Google+ and reads the tutorial. What he doesn't like to risk is to get banned from a group. As a result the newbie won't post a comment to external blogs and he wont post the URL in which he made so. The newbie belief that this will be judged as a positive attitude. In reality, the newbie was fooled, he didn't understand of news aggregation.
link spam
A common misconception of social network is, that the beginner thinks that posting a link to Google+ group is perceived as spam and if he is doing so to often he gets banned. Let us analyze the understanding of Google+ group. The belief of the newbie is, that such a group acts as an information filter in which the admin decides which post is the right one and which not. Is that the inner working of a social network? No, a social network was created with the aim to aggregate content. Content aggregation is equal to post a URL to existing content into a group. That means, posting a link is not an antipattern, but the best practice method.
The funny thing is, that the user didn't have to convince the admin, that the URL make sense. Social networks are operating by encouraging user to post more often. Because this increase the traffic. The only bottleneck in the equation is the user itself. That means, he doesn't post a url. Some beginners of Google+ have come to the conclusion, that the content is king and they are trying to create images and text in the social network. The hope is, that such behavior is perceived as positive. Unfortunately, they didn't have understood the principle at all. Content aggregation means, that the content is already there. Content aggregation means to create a playlist. And to comment the upvote the playlist of others. News aggregation doesn't mean to downvote or ban users because they have created a list of URLs.
What we can say for sure is, that most authors of Google+ tutorials have understand the principle very well. The golden method in manipulation the mass is to tell them the wrong information of how a certain system is working. Wikipedia is a great example. The entire help section of Wikipedia is wrong. If somebody will act according to the help section he will made everything wrong what is possible. The first step a wikipedia user has to do is to create his own tutorial of how to use Wikipedia right and follow these guidelines.
The same principle is obvious for social networks like Google+. The entire amount of tutorials are fake. It was created with mirror writing. The first thing to do for a newbie is, to write down his own Google+ tutorial and figure out what really the best practice method is.
But why are the Wikipedia help section and the Google+ tutorials wrong? Why is the entire help section and all Facebook tutorials wrong? Because they are written by experts who know who the system works and who are able to manipulate the reader. If the other users doesn't understand the system, the experts are staying in a better position. Hiding the secret is a well principle in the information age. Microsoft hides the sourcecode of Windows 10 before the public, McDonalds doesn't put the recipe for the burger under a creative commons license, and the Google+ experts are explaining, that users getting banned because of posting links to a group.
The good news is, that it's very easy to separate between fact and myth. From the perspective a system can be modeled. The model answers the question who the system reacts for a certain input. If the model is wrong or partly wrong, the user is not able to anticipate the systems behavior. He is doing an action and expects that a certain result will be visible but he perceives a different result. Then the model is the wrong one and the user has to find out what the real model is.
For social networks and Wikipedia the master question is which kind of system model can predict the actions of the other side in advance? If someone can predict how the admin will act, and which behavior results into upvotes he has won the game, called model building. His understanding of the system is right. My advice is, to figure out what the right prediction model for social networks is.
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