COMMENTS
Hah! ... the title of this post should be more like "Facebook Makes It Easier to Remove Fan Spam" ... it certainly hasn't 'stopped' it ... it seems like these FB spammers can create fake profiles faster than you can delete/block/report them.
I have noticed this feature and it is welcome. Spam comments have been on the rise the last couple of weeks. It's now one of the dangers of having a Facebook page. The other day I went to a client's page and there was a spam comment, I had to call them to get them to remove it.
On a personal note: I really loathe spammers.
I've been working for some time to build a fan base for my business on facebook. I don't know why I didn't expect it (duh!), but was taken by surprise the first time I discovered a spam message on my company's wall (the usual variety of "I found this easy way to make $xxx dollars a day" crap). Thee few times I've seen these messsages, I've reported them immediately, flagged as abusive, and blocked from my page. It's manageable now, but I can see where facebook has a challenge ahead if they intend to attract and retain serious businesses on their platform.
I've seen this spam on friend's FB pages and "removed" it - that is just removing from my view though, not helping my friend out??
While I hate spam as well, and it is a true annoyance, it just gives me another reason to check our fan page everyday, even if I don't have anything relevant to post. Doing so also helps keep me up to date with what our 'actual' fans are saying to us. We are a smaller organization, with only 200 fans, so for now it's manageable...but I hate to think about how hard it will be to manage spam once we have many more followers.
I'm having a problem with this. I flagged something yesterday and it is still on my fan page today. As with other Facebook implementations, it doesn't work like you think it should.
I find this to be a marginal improvement, at best.
If you "permanently ban" the person, their post stays around until you delete it. I'm not sure if their ability to post more spam is stopped immediately or, as in Facebook's previous options, you have to wait around for Facebook to catch up.
We subscribe to a Page-monitoring service that sends me an email notifying me of any Wall, Discussion or Review postings. If it's spam, I take note of the spammers "name" and delete the post.
I then view all fans, where the view is chronological by default with the newest fans first, and, because spammers tend to Like a page, spam it and leave, their name is at or near the top of the fan list.
I click the "x" and tick the "permanently ban" checkbox.
Great new feature by Facebook.