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Facebook Says It's Filtering Comments For Spam, Not Censoring Them

Posted by timothy on from the you're-not-worthy-you're-not-worthy dept.

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.

9 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. From the TFA by commlinx · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:From the TFA by jouassou · · Score: 5, Informative

      On Facebook, you use @ links to mention friends in a post or comment. So if you say something innocent like "I went to the movies with @Jane, @Peter and @Bob", that would trigger such a spam filter.

  2. Re:positive way but not spam by tomhath · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article says they are rewording the message. On the other hand they wouldn't want to give too many hints on how to side step the spam filter. Spammers versus spam filters is a constant arms race

  3. Actually, they do censor. by OzUnsane · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try exchanging even private messages using the term 'xtube'. Yes, they censor.

    --
    I'm not paranoid - everyone really is out to get me.
    1. Re:Actually, they do censor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Redtube too.

    2. Re:Actually, they do censor. by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Informative

      Porn sites tend to use affiliate marketing. Which means Joe Spammer can make money from people following his links to xtube. Not hard to see why it would become a sign of spam in the Facebook filter.

    3. Re:Actually, they do censor. by Cito · · Score: 5, Informative

      I just tested that on my msn account

      I tested on aim, msn, yahoo chat on my trillian client and I could paste that URL without it censoring

      So it's not censored by the actual msn network at all.

      The official msn client might censor it. But who uses official clients anyhow?

      Trillian rocks and doesnt block anything for censorship. Worked just fine pasting a no-ip.org site, tested about 10 of them

  4. Re:It's been a while. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    You aren't as funny as you think you are.

  5. Big Fuss Over Nothing by Haedrian · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.