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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.

8 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. 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

  2. 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 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

  3. 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.

  4. Just stop using Facebook by rta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. If only. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:It's been a while. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You are depriving Facebook of access to your future comments though. You're also making Facebook just a little bit less valuable to your friends (who can't use it to contact you anymore) and to advertisers (who can't use it to sell you things anymore).

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  7. Re:There was nothing in the comment to censor by dr_blurb · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's nothing worth censoring in that comment, a guy made a post,

    Well, he did mention Google+