Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Says It's Filtering Comments For Spam, Not Censoring Them
bhagwad writes "Apparently Robert Scoble tried to post a long comment on Facebook only to have a message pop up saying 'This comment seems irrelevant or inappropriate and can't be posted. To avoid having your comments blocked, please make sure they contribute to the post in a positive way.' If true, this is huge. For one the self-moderating system of comments has always been the rule so far. And with countries like India rooting for the pre-screening of content and comments, is Facebook thinking of caving into these demands?" Facebook says there's a more innocuous explanation: namely, that the comment triggered a spam filter.
if it triggered a spam filter, why don't they just say that comment was spam-like but ask the user to post in a positive way.
Not sure how old this story is, but from among other things from TFA (well blog entry) that appear to be have updated over time:
2. My comment included three @ links. That probably is what triggered the spam classification system.
I don't use Facebook / Twitter but that along with other a few other characteristics of the message in question sound like a pretty reasonable way to set up a spam filter.
Myleen Klbutt applied to the Mrumpachusetts Insbreastute of Technology, but she didn't get in so she went to Svaginahorpe instead.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Try exchanging even private messages using the term 'xtube'. Yes, they censor.
I'm not paranoid - everyone really is out to get me.
Unless something new is discovered, it's probably just an unfortunate wording. Had Facebook not tried to be more clever than it is, the developer would just placed "You triggered a spam filter" in the comment, user would complain, and Facebook would work on the spam filter.
From the other hand, where were the hordes of Martin Niemoller quoters when the spam filtering was introduced in the first place? If were a Nazi I would first came for that guy, so he would not leave this quote.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
First post since 1999 to say...
Delete your fucking Facebook account, idiot.
Problem solved.
And actually, the guy who tried to post, is the reason why FB has so much power anyway. The blocked comment itself says he can't be bothered to read blogs anymore and he just watches FB, G+ and twitter. If you want to go swimming with sharks don't be surprised if you get eaten.
Oh, you must not remember the goatse ascii stuff the trolls made prolific here in the early days of Slashdot.
To illustrate Slashdot's own comment filtering system, Try pasing the following into a Slashdot comment three times and hit preview.
@}-,-`-
You'll get:
Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Try typing something like "OMG PONIES OMG OMG OMG" without quotes and you'll get:
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Yet, a quarter of the people I know on FB use both forms *extensively*. If only they'd filter those out.
In this information age where data-mining, credit/reputation ratings, etc. are the norm, why do people who are aware of its draconian privacy aspects, potential for misuse and the time sink that it is, continue to use FB? This is a serious 87 billion dollar question.
Prolific spammer Facebook allegedly implements an anti-spam mechanism? In related news, Exxon has announced that henceforth its offshore drilling platforms will be called "environmental enhancement modules".
... how, exactly?
Have you actually tried to post on Slashdot recently?
I’m so glad I didn’t start a media business. It’s actually really tough to get new and interesting stories and to avoid falling into drama. People forget that Techcrunch was built step-by-step as a new publishing form was taking shape. PandoDaily doesn’t have that advantage and, is, indeed, facing competition from social networks that is quite good indeed. I no longer visit blogs. I watch Twitter, Google+, and Facebook, along with Hacker News, Techmeme, Quora. These are the new news sources. Plus, Pando Daily actually doesn’t have enough capital to compete head on with, say, D: All Things Digital or The Verge, both of which are expanding quickly and have ecosystems behind them.
There's nothing worth censoring in that comment, a guy made a post, the system flagged it as spam, it was a simple false positive. The fact that it's the first that we know of is pretty damn impressive, means that their system is probably working quite well.
I wish that the editors would quit with the sensationalist crap already, can we please use some common sense next time?
You forgot her day trips to Ladypartheroe and Chickenburnspath
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
And even if you go through with the deletion process, you still have to avoid logging in (watch out for saved passwords on a laptop) for two weeks.
Nothing to see.
Good comment! I truly love how it is easy on my eyes and the data are well written. I’m wondering how I might be notified whenever a new post has been made. I’ve subscribed to your RSS feed which must do the trick! Have a great day! P.S. MicrosoftUggLiveBoots!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The message he tried to put really looked like the sort of thing bots post. I'm not surprised at all an automated spam filter blocked it. He did mention 11 different 3rd party websites in it, so its not too amazing that it flagged.
But as usual facebook is run by evil commies who want to oppress our free speech and all that.
I'm hungover
Bingo. If you're hung over, then you probably drank too much. Overdrinking leads to all sorts of excesses in risk-taking: promiscuous sex, abuse of drugs, poorly executed extreme stunts, violence against others, and other ridiculousness. Do you want others to judge you for this?
by deleting my fb account
What'd be the difference between "filtering" and "censoring"?
How would you tell spam and non-spam apart?
Will I still be able to read what you filtered out as spam?
Why don't you leave the users themselves to trash what they consider useless on their own?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
... with having shoddy scripts deciding all sorts of things for you. Like what name you can have.
They can name it what they like, their filtering is full of american- (california-) centric assumptions that don't hold elsewhere. Comment longer than a tweet? must be spam. And so on. Frankly, amazing how much of that sort of abuse people put up with.
Man, are those Google engineers growing lonely talking to each other because nobody's using their redundant social network?
Encourage people to go outside, meet people, screw girls instead of giving yet another company access to the minutae and details of their lives to raise advertising revenue.
Also what the fuck, Slashdot? No trust in the moderation system anymore? Why would anyone flag a comment as 'inappropriate' if moderation works? Since Taco went to greener pastures it seems this place has begun its downslide in earnest.
They block the Pirate Bay links, give it a shot if you'd like.
I will wait on the down mod but I feel compelled to reply to their excuse with the only applicable word....BULLSHIT!
Look at all the names he dropped,
I no longer visit blogs. I watch Twitter, Google+, and Facebook, along with Hacker News, Techmeme, Quora. These are the new news sources.
that's why it got filtered.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I know its their right as a commercial entity, but its wrong to filter anyone's content.
I hope more people find out and show their disapproval with their feet. ( i know, its wish full thinking )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I posted a youtube link that was on topic to someone elses youtube link on their status update and I got hit with a captcha challenge to prove I was human...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I have never regretted closing and deleting the Facebook page that I had. I'm even more glad that it didn't use my real name or ever have any pictures with me in them anywhere on Facebook. Facebook is a fucking social virus and I'll celebrate the day it comes crashing down in ruin. I'll also laugh and point at all of you who scoffed at my valuing privacy on the day that it finally dawns on you that you've screwed yourselves over six ways from Sunday by putting your entire life on the damned thing.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
That doesn't sound any different.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
That's still completely arbitrary. Essentially that's saying that if I'm not a complete drone and posting the same kinds of things all the time, I'll get flagged as Spam.
That's an even worse kind of censorship, because it is so insidious.
Facebook has a more subtle, and therefore more insidious, form of censorship it applies: Facebook only shows you a subset of your finds posts and it prefers posts from friends who are compete drones posting drivel all the time. Posts from interesting friends who only post occasionally simply never get shown to anyone.
Similar to fark's "invisible bans" but sneakier because over time it subtly encourages you to post often and post mindless crap.
Is there a way to post exactly what you wanted to originally, by jumping through a captcha hoop? If there is a prove-I'm-a-human way around it, then seems like a reasonable heuristic-triggered spam-filter to me. If not... it's definitely censorship.
to 1984 and Soylent Green.
One of the most insightful posts on Facebook ever - and there's damn few of them given Slashdot's rabid antipathy towards Facebook.
In 500 words or less is "filtering spam" not "censoring." They determened the content does not meet their (rather low) quality standards, so they refused to publish it. That is the definition of censoring. Now, censoring is not all bad, and I have no problem with any web operator choosing to censor what they publish, but let's call a spade a spade.
That's Dr. Facebook, thank you.
That goes beyond stopping spam. I've been blocked from linking several Slashdot articles that included mentions of U.S. intelligence agencies.
As I wrote in http://mbalog.robincheung.ca/farcebook-cens0ring-gymnastics/ for having a comment blocked for a "spammy link," when my post didn't even have a Link, nor anything that could plausibly be considered "spammy," I have to call attention to the idea that just because one wears a tin-foil hat to ward off mind-control rays, it doesn't mean that its true use isn't apocryphal until a later date (or, as John 20:29's reply to Doubting Thomas' "Dominus meus et Deus meus!" be paraphrased, "Thomas be blessed; for you saw and believed, but even more blessed be those who believed and did not have to find out cens0ring was already institutionalised through their own apathy.")
If it be a spam post, Farcebook already has a CAPTCHA system in place to verify that it is a human sender; beyond that, it doesn't matter what the content is because it's not up to Farcebook to determine if it is acceptable beyond any extant but cryptic disclaiming Acceptable Use type policies.
Unless you would it were, either by express wish or apathy.
...as of a few months ago. Someone posted one of those virus hoaxes that's been floating around via email for 12+ years and I informed them that it was such and linked to the related Snopes article. The comment was rejected because the linked url was "spammy".
First post to /. in a while, but nobody seems to ask the question, why does Facebook need a spam filter? Would not one just block connections or eliminate them from your network if they were spamming you?
I deleted my FB account a long time ago for the normal reasons:
1. It became clear that there was no real privacy policy, in particular with the platform changing my settings every policy update. I mean fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I'm a fricken idiot right? No, second time was enough, delete account.
2. Complete drivel posts from people I barely knew had me spending less and less time on it, and slowly every time I would see it it was just annoying. It really is moronic.
3. A visit to a large telecom operator CEO in Asia, and he was bragging about how their ad agency put together this great campaign to promote their pre-pay cards, by creating 10's of thousands (yes, x0,000's ) of fake users that would go out and make friends with everyone they could and push the products. Bragging.....lol
4. The entire HB Gary scandal. I mean that it itself goes to show that there are people out there just dying to get into your network with real or fake personas and either data mine, scam you, sell something, identity theft, whatever. Six degrees of separation means....someday, somewhere it would be possible to implicate any Facebook user in a crime, fraud, scandal, etc. when in reality the user had zero knowledge or participation in that event. But it could appear that way and show very dubious circumstantial evidence through "connections". It will happen, you watch....a completely innocent someone, somewhere, eventually will go to death row because of implications through social connections and interactions showing "evidence" of participation. And once the legal precedence is set....wham.....everyone can be set up for anything by any person in power.
You could say I'm wearing a tin foil hat here. Then again you could say Facebook users are wearing a "Sucker Below" hat.
My advice is don't complain about Facebook censoring. Delete your account there are much better ways to show Grandma pictures of the kids....
Real men don't need signitures!!!
To a friend's post that pointed out an obvious conclusion done by some "study" I wrote "Well, duh!" as a comment. I got that popup. How could ANYONE possibly believe this could in any way be an implementation of a spam filter? Of what possible use would a spammer have of this explicit irony? How really stupid do they think we are?
Come over to Google+... they have cookies and they don't censor your posts
I can't post anything on any Facebook-enabled sites anymore like CNN, etc. I just get a page asking me to enter a "mobile number". I don't have one, and I'm not about to enter my land line. I wouldn't give them a "mobile number" even if I had one anyway. Am I the only guy left who hasn't completely bent over for Facebook or something?