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Facebook Social Networks The Internet

Facebook Says It is Sorry For Suggesting Child Sex Videos in Search (cnet.com) 48

Facebook issued an apology on Friday after offensive terms appeared in the social network's search predictions late Thursday. From a report: When users typed "videos of" into the search bar, Facebook prompted them to search phrases including "videos of sexuals," "videos of girl sucking dick under water" and, perhaps most disturbingly, "video of little girl giving oral." Shocked users reported the problem on Twitter, posting screenshots of the search terms, which also included multiple suggestions relating to the school shooting in Florida last month. The social network appeared to have fixed the problem by Friday morning.
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Facebook Says It is Sorry For Suggesting Child Sex Videos in Search

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  • to be really sorry needs to cover all legal costs even an 3M dream team

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I would like to see a video of girls sucking dick under water. Thanks for suggesting it, FB. You know me well.

  • by PeterGM ( 5304449 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @03:16PM (#56271701)
    ... is the fact that those search suggestions are likely the result of them being popular searches. It's a sick world, really.
    • Or if they are making the algorithms a little too smart those searches are done by people which correlate well with his data.

      • I suspect it's something a litlle more mundane, like using the frequency of searches to rank up autocompletion. There are people out there that will game this behavior just for the lulz.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @03:34PM (#56271833) Homepage

      ... is the fact that those search suggestions are likely the result of them being popular searches. It's a sick world, really.

      Maybe, maybe not. I've noticed that Google likes to try chaining searches, like if you search for "redheads" and then "girls with glasses" it'll show you far more redheads with glasses even though that's not what you searched for right now. Which means that if you're mixing "serious" and "not so serious" searches, different people using the same family computer etc. you're going to end up with a lot of weird shit.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        This is exactly why Google is becoming more and more useless, it tries to guess what I want rather than giving me what I want.

        I switched to DuckDuckGo and really haven't looked back.

      • Anecdote v. anecdote, but I use Google to frequently search for work related math things and I don't ever see it combining them. I think I'd notice if it suggested autocorrecting so I got things like "Category theory for hot Hermione/Bellatrix fan-fic". Um, maybe that example says more than I should be saying about my own preferences.
      • I for one take redheads very, very seriously -- thank you very much!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      ... is the fact that those search suggestions are likely the result of them being popular searches.

      It's a sick world, really.

      None of those searches are especially bad. In fact, they're very mild compared to the really bad stuff. Even the "little girl" one is most likely not about age, it's just people are too stupid to know the word petite. Especially people searching for porn on FB. But porn frequently plays on the young and petite angle and that doesn't mean kid or underage.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Not necessarily a sick world, just that Facebook users seem to be a sick bunch. Do you use Facebook, why, are you looking for this stuff? Should you be using Facebook? Should you allow family members to use Facebook? Should you be associating with people who use Facebook? Just because large numbers of Facebook users have questionable morals, does not mean the rest of is who do not use that platform and avoid it like the plague are not of the same low moral standard. Is Facebook in reality worse than https:/ [4chan.org]

  • Uh huh (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lunix Nutcase ( 1092239 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @03:24PM (#56271757)

    Facebook Says It is Sorry For Getting Caught Suggesting Child Sex Videos in Search

    FTFY.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    "video of little girl giving oral"? That's terrible. Speaking in front of the whole classroom is stressful enough on pupils without someone recording a video of the oral. Have some respect.

  • Maybe facebook should take a break from censoring people with right wing views and try doing something about actual illegal content like paedophilia and recruiters for Islamic terrorists.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Seems easy to fake these screenshots. Maybe I will try to make some and generate some more outrage.

  • https://youtu.be/izXnCkrfjO0
  • "The company apologized and said that it had never and would never allow child grooming on the site."

    Washing and combing their hair?

  • ...but we're not sorry for being creepy stalkers.

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