Does Facebook cause friends to fight?

You leave an update on your page. Nothing really inflammatory or controversial - or so you might think at first blush. But before you know it, that seemingly innocent post triggers a breathless flame war between Facebook friends publicly tearing each others' responses to pieces in the mother of all cyber-slap-downs..

Wish I could say that's a one-off but hat Facebook user hasn't encountered what, anaerobically, at least, seems to be an increasingly familiar social networking pitfall?

Unfortunately, that's often what happens in the no-holds barred world of social networking. Consider the following vignette described by ZDNet's David Gewirtz, when a friend of long standing posted a comment that was a bit off the charts, even for him.

"He's a kind, sweet, somewhat naive old gent, but I've known him for years and he's got a great heart. One of my crazy conservative friends then proceeded to remove that heart and eat it. To the liberal's defense jumped more libs. To the conservative's defense jumped more conservatives. Suddenly, my little Facebook posting was a war zone."

I can sympathize. Same thing has happened to yours truly as well as to friends of mine. Outside of of sending out an S.O.S. to Ban Ki Moon, what do you do? These days, I keep the peace by more carefully editing my oh so witty remarks and thinking two or three times about  what links I repost. How about you? Leave a comment and describe your experience - and don't forget to take our poll.