According to the brains trust - that is, elements of Launceston's criminal underbelly - I was behind/leaking information to an anonymous Facebook group that "exposed" said crooks.

Never mind that I get paid to expose people in various stages of legal difficulty for a newspaper.

Or that my stories carry my name. Or that journalists don't leak, they are leaked to. Or that the information being splashed over Facebook was on the public record, making my alleged "leaking" rather unnecessary.

None of this mattered, of course.

"Been told different old cheese, all I'm saying is a lot of people not happy with you," one conspiracy believer said.

This was followed by a rather menacing wink emoticon.

I raised stories I'd written that weren't exactly flattering of the Facebook site in question. Be strange to write those if I was the puppet-master, right?

"Not really if ya trying to cover ya self aye," came the reply.

I started to feel like I was falling into the category of one "who doth protest too much".

But it was galling.

After years of covering rather unsavoury characters, here I was being threatened and harassed over things I hadn't even written.

I began to peruse the faces of the people who now probably thought I'd splashed them all over Facebook for the kind of humiliating treatment the platform excels in.

The harassment spilled over into the real world with a visit at work by some aggrieved souls who invited me down the pub to "sort it out".

Enough was enough, it was time to turn to Facebook.

In terms of disappointment, few things rank as high as Facebook's response to online bullying.

I could handle the abuse and the threats, but was truly offended by Facebook's lack of accountability or sense of responsibility.

Here was an internet giant that embodies social connectedness but has an email address that doesn't work.

I now feel genuine pity for people who become targets on Facebook and have nowhere to turn.

I reported post after post that defamed, threatened or harassed me, only to be told in most cases it didn't violate Facebook's community standards.

Colleagues were now urging me to at least flag the issue with police.

But in true social media style, it pretty much blew over within 24 hours.

"Sorry mate, a lot of confusion has come out of this cause now people have changed stories," I was told by one of my former accusers.