When she was good, she was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Facebook's roots lie in the ancient traditions once linked to the fevered (and all too often tasteless and cruel) search for true love and luck coincident in ancient times with the appearance on college campuses each year of little paper-bound booklets containing, among other things, the pictures of incoming students: the original "Face Books."

In thousands of pre-vaping smoke-filled dorm rooms, in fraternity and sorority houses everywhere, young people pored over the volumes and "rated" the pictures there.

The founders of Facebook figured a way to do it online.

The rest is history or at least history in the making.

As is the case with new technologies, or in this case, many new "applications" of technology, people who have used or exploited Facebook and the sites that sought to emulate it have produced results both good and evil.

For Facebook, the good things need no exegesis. Because of those good things more than a billion people worldwide use Facebook alone. Variants abound. Indeed, nearly everyone with online access in the entire world participates in electronic "social networking" of one kind or another.

In the hands of the wrong people Facebook and its kin, like all technologies, can be used to negative or even destructive effect. Those tales too need no exegesis here.

Like printing, the telegraph, movies, the telephone, radio, television, and all other forms of technologically amplified communication, Facebook, its friends and relations enable both the best and worst of us.

Only this time it's not only what's said, videoed, or otherwise communicated directly that's powerful . . . it's also what the technology allows us to know about who is saying what, to whom, and even why.

That profound and newly accessible knowledge, in turn, gives the best and worst of us the ability to communicate with very carefully targeted groups of people, based on what they've told us about themselves, sometimes willingly, sometimes inadvertently.

This newfound ability to seek out and mobilize "friends and relations" thus brings us Agnieszka Golec de Zavala's article, "Why Collective Narcissists Are So Politically Volatile," published under the auspices of the University of London's Prejudice Lab.

The lab's researchers (and others in leading universities around the world) identify "Collective Narcissists" as those who " . . . are particularly sensitive to even the smallest offences to their group's image."

In contrast to "individual" narcissists, who "maintain inflated views of themselves," these folks "exaggerate offenses to their group's image, and respond to them aggressively."

They think "their group's importance and worth are not sufficiently recognized by others . . . " and "insist that it gets the recognition and respect it deserves."

They believe, in other words, "in the exaggerated greatness" of their group and demand "external validation."

They demand "privileged treatment", not "equal rights."

They are radically different from those who "simply hold positive feelings" about a group to which they belong.

They exhibit, instead, "a need for continuous external validation of the groups' inflated image."

"When their own group is involved," the author notes, "collective narcissists have no sense of humor. They are disproportionately punitive in responding to what they perceive as an insult to their group, even when the insult is debatable, not perceived by others, or not intended . . ."

Collective narcissism, they continue, " . . . is so toxic it explains phenomena such as anti-Semitism and perhaps even two world wars . . ."

It was strongly predictive, multiple studies indicate, of voting behavior among those who, in 2016, both voted for Donald Trump in the United States and for Brexit in Great Britain.

We see it among local defenders of the "lost cause" and prejudice against religious minorities, women, immigrants, and others.

Of all the dangers of social media, whether Facebook or variants thereof, the empowerment of such people is arguably the greatest, most dangerous and most difficult-to-control downside problem.

Given the ability of exploiters of such technology to not only communicate with the openly like-minded, but target potential friends, allies, contributors for direct or indirect recruitment, regulation is in order.

The trick, of course, is to regulate the media without destroying them, given the constitutionally protected inarguable positives they provide and will continue to provide.

Book burnings don't work.

Neither will overbearing censorship of the web and its content.

A combination of regulation protecting the public against the most egregious dangers and voluntary efforts by both providers and users to govern what's written and what personal information is exposed is clearly the answer.

Europe has made a start with its "right to be forgotten" legislation, which gives every user control of his or her personal data.

We're still working on print, movies, the telephone, radio, and television.

This will not be easy . . . but it must be done.