Is Facebook’s scheme, announced over the weekend, to encourage its three billion users to pay $12 (£10) a month to have their accounts verified really just a form of corporate extortion?
I ask only because last year someone – I strongly suspect a deranged Novak Djokovic fan – took the time to create a fake Facebook profile featuring me. The photo that accompanies the profile, which is named ‘Damian Damian’, is certainly of me, although Boris Johnson, who I was standing next to when it was taken, has been cropped out.
Onto my forehead has been superimposed a fetching pair of devil’s horns and posts include ‘I’m a delusional little boy’, ‘I’m an evil journalist with a secret agenda’ and, most charmingly of all, ‘my obsession won, I didn’t order the medicine, I can’t remember the last time I took it’.
I’m fingering a Djokovic fan as the culprit because the profile appeared very shortly after I incurred the wrath of thousands of them on Twitter by posting footage
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in