False Facebook post damages dog grooming businesses reputation

Occasionally on this site we do try and highlight the lurking dangers of social media bandwagons and the harm that sharing unverified information accusing others of various wrongdoings can cause.

Examples are rife. Take the Melbourne man who was labelled a pedophile and had his photo spread across Facebook by a mother who mistakenly believed he was taking photos of her children in a shopping mall. In reality he was taking an innocent selfie next to some Star Wars memorabilia, and later received an apology from the mistaken mum.

Or how about the Perth teenager who was incorrectly identified as the culprit of a photo depicting a person urinating on a war memorial. That social media bandwagon not only incorrectly identified the man in the picture, but also encouraged others to share his address. The potential consequences of those actions don’t bear thinking about.

Or of course we could also go back to the Boston Bombings which led to the largest online witchhunt slash bandwagon in online history that incorrectly exposed a number of innocent people to literally hundreds of thousands of baying digital voices.

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This week we’ve seen how incorrect Internet bandwagons can hurt local businesses. The following post – accusing a dog groomers business in Cicero, New York of animal neglect – was shared thousands of times across Facebook.

PLEASE READ DO NOT SCROLL URGENT WARNING TO DOG OWNERS AND ANIMAL LOVERS. This past Saturday may 20th my mother used the services of carms Mobil dog grooming for her dog rocky who is the nicest calmest dog you will ever meet. After they were done grooming him my mother had to leave to go to her grandsons baseball game. When she returned Rocky did not get up to great her as he always does. My mom went to check him out and he could not get up. When she inspected him she found clipper burns all over his rear legs and but und underbelly. He could not even stand up he was in so much pain. She couldn’t believe it. She immediately contacted CARMS MOBIL DIG GROOMER FROM CICERO NY. OWNED BY CARMEN J.CESTA. She told them what she found and sent them pictures and video of her dog. In the emails and pics in this post you will see the emails between my mother and them. They told her they would refund her money which they did and also pay for any vet bills that would come. She took Rocky to the vet as he got worse on Monday. After examination they found he had all the clipper burns that were now infected as well as a broken femur in his rear leg. Once they revived word from my mother they would not respond to her or return her calls. Until this evening when the owner basically told her to f*** off. The only way to repair the broken leg is through surgery which obviously is a huge expense. I just want all my friends and anyone who lives there let to be aware of how this place takes care of there clients. Please I beg of you to share this with all your friends on any social media you can to save some other family from going through this tragic event. Someone like this should not be in business and should not be able to hurt someone’s family like this.

Penned by the angry owner of a dog that was found to have severe injuries to its legs after visiting the dog grooming establishment, the post soon accrued thousands of shares online. However the owner of the dog groomers, Carmen Cesta, did his own investigation.

And that investigation led to video surveillance footage showing the dog in question actually being run over by a car outside the dog owner’s house. That footage led to a quick apology from Carmen’s accuser who claimed it “wasn’t a scam” and that they had been lied to by family members.

Thousands of social media users shared the inaccurate, accusing post in disgust, and according to Carmen, that led to his business receiving over 100 cancellations and potentially irreparable damage to their reputation.

It is natural to be compelled to share information that angers us in a notion of karmic justice, but it is important that the information we share is both fair and accurate. Otherwise we can cause others unfair harm and contribute to the ever growing problem of trial by social media.

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