As social media influencers, we here at Gawker.com are, needless to say, widely revered by young urban gang members. It is to the that we offer this public service announcement: stop talking about all your crimes, on the internet. Okay?

This is really a very simple principle to which more successful criminals throughout history have adhered as a general rule. Even before the internet was invented. Al Capone did not post his racketeering plans on bulletin boards. The Westies did not write and mimeograph recaps of their various brawls and then distribute those mimeographs on street corners. Nicky Barnes did not drive around Manhattan, bullhorn in hand, boasting loudly of the new shipments he'd received. And, likewise, in this modern world which you have had the mixed fortune to inherit, you should not post things on Facebook, about who you want to fuck up, or about how much money you made while engaged in illegal activities.

Do not post such things on Twitter either.

This seems like "common sense" to those of us slightly older than you, but of course you wild young people these days have grown up immersed in such technology, immune to the lures of privacy, and you think nothing of putting all of your business, legal and illegal, "out there" for the world to see. To be honest, it is not the world at large you really need to be concerned about; it is the NYPD. You see, with the end of "stop and frisk" looming (not in reality, but in legality), the NYPD is now forced to come up with a new strategy with a fancy new Policey-sounding name to tout to the press to explain its various victories. And the new one, as the New York Times reports today, is "Operation Crew Cut," which is really just a fancy copspeak way of saying "we are looking at your Facebook and your Twitter and your Instagram and yes, my friends, they will be used against you in a court of law."

The strategy seeks to exploit the online postings of suspected members and their digital connections to build criminal conspiracy cases against whole groups that might otherwise take years of painstaking undercover work to penetrate. Facebook, officers like to say now, is the most reliable informer.

Okay. Is that clear enough? It really could not get any clearer, until you hear the handcuffs click. Facebook is the snitch. So stop snitching.

And stay in school, etc., [boilerplate].

[Photo via Facebook. See!?]