Top students subscribe to “CIAbook”

The CIA created Facebook and is using it to spy on students.

This claim is made by a Facebook group with 776 members worldwide. There are 84 others with similar claims – a combined membership of 7,656.

But, says the group’s founder, a US student: “this is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a sceptical position taken after carefully gathering extensive knowledge about the CIA’s past in domestic surveillance.”

Well, the CIA must have a difficult job - Facebook now has over 60 million members. And besides, it only takes a quick Wikipedia search to discover that Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook for student networking whilst at Harvard. The idea has made him millions.

Unlike Zuckerberg’s original model, making a new group on Facebook couldn’t be easier. No university-based party, pub-crawl, club or fraternity is without its respective Facebook group or event. Anyone can make a group, and they do.

Funnily enough, it was a recruitment drive by US Intelligence, specifically the National Clandestine Service, that started people worrying in the first place. In December 2006 the NCS launched a Facebook group aimed at attracting top students to its graduate scheme.

It was a smart move. In a month the group had 2,100 members, but paranoia spread. The CIA know about Facebook? Surely that means they have access to all our personal information from our taste in music to our political affiliation?

Actually no, replied Facebook’s marketing team; “the CIA has no direct access to any user’s profile. They adhere to the same rules as all of our advertisers. We do not publish or disseminate our users’ information to any advertiser.”

In other words, the CIA have got better things to do.

What’s most surprising about the groups is their network makeup - by checking the members’ networks it is possible to learn where students are studying. Boston. Harvard. Montreal. Manchester. Sydney. Chicago. New York. Washington.

These are bright students who, while studying, spend hours analysing and researching information to the highest standards. Yet outside academic work, Facebook is where they trade misinformation – where counterknowledge becomes standard currency.

It’s not just CIA conspiracies. Quack medicine has found its way onto Facebook too. There are 22 groups that profess a belief in homeopathy, with a combined membership of 936. Again, a quick look at the membership reveals that students from Yale, University College London, Newcastle and Bristol subscribe to the pseudoscience.

Less surprisingly, there are students and “academics” from the University of Westminster in London, which offers a degree in the subject. Alarmingly, listed in the group “For the Love of Homeopathy” is a member of the World Health Organisation.

Just as Facebook is a convenient way to send and receive information, to organise and socialise, so it has become a convenient way to send and receive misinformation.

Even the creepiest conspiracy theories and the quackiest of medicines have Facebook subscribers. September 11th masterminded by George W. Bush, Princess Diana still alive (“how did her bodyguard get so rich?”), creationism masquerading as a science – they’re all there.

What’s really worrying is how many intelligent young people are signing up to them.