A Word on Recent Events
Because it's been such an explosive issue on social media and people can't seem to understand what's at work in regards to FurBuy staff surrounding recent incidents, I figured I might take a few minutes to explain some of the reasons we do the things we do and why. You're free to comment here and give your thoughts if you can keep it civil and polite, if you're just going to pile-in and be an unconstructive hater your comment will be removed.
What even happened?
To cut a long, long story fairly short, a fursuit was posted for sale on FurBuy and within a couple hours the 'owner' of the suit started a social media witch-hunt against the 'seller' for trying to sell an item they owned. Our staff (for the most part) followed our usual protocol in such cases - contact each party and ask for reasonable and definitive proof of possession of the item(s) for sale. This is easily done with a simple photo and for most folks doesn't take more than 30 seconds to a minute - we all have camera phones these days and email apps built into them. There were a number of incongruent things about both the 'owner' account and the 'seller' account that made each look questionable and some strong evidence initially that the two accounts were related. But we didn't feel the evidence was solid enough at the time to follow that line of pursuit, so we carried on with our usual path. The next day the drama had boiled over and also the evidence of the two accounts being connected became strikingly obvious, so we followed that path which is to suspend the accounts for fraud and duplication and also close any auctions associated with the accounts. (To clarify since some people missed the subtlety of the last sentence: The 'owner' and the 'seller' are one and the same person - the 'seller' account was definitively shown to be a sockpuppet of the owner's account.) Which caused a couple particularly beligerrant individuals to attack our staff verbally, for which they were also suspended. Now, as many have seen, the whole mess has descended into social media white-knighting and flamewars, nothing new for furry fans or FurBuy.
Why won't you provide the evidence?
Because it's our policy not to - for a number of reasons. Firstly, it would be a breach of our posted privacy policies to disseminate personally identifying information or information which could be used to identify an individual. We feel it would be a violation of the person's privacy, whether legal or not, so we choose not to divulge that information. Secondly, providing evidence to the public about the information we collect and maintain in our system, especially in regards to our fraud detection and security systems, could compromise those systems by informing bad actors as to how they work and make them easier to skirt or avoid, which is not in the best interest of our users and ongoing operations. Tertiarily, we don't feel it would add anything to the situation - which is also why we haven't publicly attacked the seller to accuse them of what they've done. In our eyes the issue is cut-and-dry and has been resolved - we found a bad actor and they have been removed.
Why would someone even do something like this? What would they have to gain?
We came up with a pretty good-sized list talking about it in our staff chat. At least ten reasons. But we're not going to give them here. Why? Because it's pure speculation and doesn't add anything to the situation. Suffice to say there are plenty of reasons that 6 people could come up with and agree on in half an hour of discussing it. We'd imagine that you all could come up with a few yourselves.
Why has your staff handled this so badly?
tl;dr: we're human, we make mistakes, we're not perfect. Really. Hard to believe, right? We've also never had a situation exactly like this before, so didn't have a protocol in place for how to handle it. Our staff are mostly NOT public relations or customer support backgrounds - our staff are volunteers who pitch in to help keep the site running just like our subscribers do (in fact most of our staff are paying subcribers as well). We do our best but when things get choppy we give what we get. While we'd love to be able to be shiny happy customer service people for you all every moment of every day we're also real people who aren't "getting paid for this shit" and don't have to put up with personal attacks, ad hominem attacks and people being rude and bullying towards our staff. This isn't Burger King, you can't always have it your way. Don't like that attitude? We don't know what to tell you, there are other places you can take your business. We're real fans and people, not a mindless corporate hive. (As an aside, don't like how we do business? Think you can do it better? We'd welcome you to join our staff and fix that; do something useful instead of bitching about it.)
Why is your staff blocking so many people on Twitter and elsewhere?
Simple: no time for haters. Some of them are also guilty of harassment or bullying - don't have time for that either. Some were blocked because they're suspended - email is our official channel of communications when someone is suspended (and official for other uses too) - blocking on social media just helps drive that point home and free up our social media operators to focus on what is actually important to us: genuine people who want help or advice and aren't dicks about it.
What even happened?
To cut a long, long story fairly short, a fursuit was posted for sale on FurBuy and within a couple hours the 'owner' of the suit started a social media witch-hunt against the 'seller' for trying to sell an item they owned. Our staff (for the most part) followed our usual protocol in such cases - contact each party and ask for reasonable and definitive proof of possession of the item(s) for sale. This is easily done with a simple photo and for most folks doesn't take more than 30 seconds to a minute - we all have camera phones these days and email apps built into them. There were a number of incongruent things about both the 'owner' account and the 'seller' account that made each look questionable and some strong evidence initially that the two accounts were related. But we didn't feel the evidence was solid enough at the time to follow that line of pursuit, so we carried on with our usual path. The next day the drama had boiled over and also the evidence of the two accounts being connected became strikingly obvious, so we followed that path which is to suspend the accounts for fraud and duplication and also close any auctions associated with the accounts. (To clarify since some people missed the subtlety of the last sentence: The 'owner' and the 'seller' are one and the same person - the 'seller' account was definitively shown to be a sockpuppet of the owner's account.) Which caused a couple particularly beligerrant individuals to attack our staff verbally, for which they were also suspended. Now, as many have seen, the whole mess has descended into social media white-knighting and flamewars, nothing new for furry fans or FurBuy.
Why won't you provide the evidence?
Because it's our policy not to - for a number of reasons. Firstly, it would be a breach of our posted privacy policies to disseminate personally identifying information or information which could be used to identify an individual. We feel it would be a violation of the person's privacy, whether legal or not, so we choose not to divulge that information. Secondly, providing evidence to the public about the information we collect and maintain in our system, especially in regards to our fraud detection and security systems, could compromise those systems by informing bad actors as to how they work and make them easier to skirt or avoid, which is not in the best interest of our users and ongoing operations. Tertiarily, we don't feel it would add anything to the situation - which is also why we haven't publicly attacked the seller to accuse them of what they've done. In our eyes the issue is cut-and-dry and has been resolved - we found a bad actor and they have been removed.
Why would someone even do something like this? What would they have to gain?
We came up with a pretty good-sized list talking about it in our staff chat. At least ten reasons. But we're not going to give them here. Why? Because it's pure speculation and doesn't add anything to the situation. Suffice to say there are plenty of reasons that 6 people could come up with and agree on in half an hour of discussing it. We'd imagine that you all could come up with a few yourselves.
Why has your staff handled this so badly?
tl;dr: we're human, we make mistakes, we're not perfect. Really. Hard to believe, right? We've also never had a situation exactly like this before, so didn't have a protocol in place for how to handle it. Our staff are mostly NOT public relations or customer support backgrounds - our staff are volunteers who pitch in to help keep the site running just like our subscribers do (in fact most of our staff are paying subcribers as well). We do our best but when things get choppy we give what we get. While we'd love to be able to be shiny happy customer service people for you all every moment of every day we're also real people who aren't "getting paid for this shit" and don't have to put up with personal attacks, ad hominem attacks and people being rude and bullying towards our staff. This isn't Burger King, you can't always have it your way. Don't like that attitude? We don't know what to tell you, there are other places you can take your business. We're real fans and people, not a mindless corporate hive. (As an aside, don't like how we do business? Think you can do it better? We'd welcome you to join our staff and fix that; do something useful instead of bitching about it.)
Why is your staff blocking so many people on Twitter and elsewhere?
Simple: no time for haters. Some of them are also guilty of harassment or bullying - don't have time for that either. Some were blocked because they're suspended - email is our official channel of communications when someone is suspended (and official for other uses too) - blocking on social media just helps drive that point home and free up our social media operators to focus on what is actually important to us: genuine people who want help or advice and aren't dicks about it.
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