Facebook Bug Caused Legitimate News Articles About the Coronavirus To Be Marked As Spam 31
McGruber shares a report from Business Insider: Facebook is blocking users from posting some legitimate news articles about the coronavirus in what appears to be a bug in its spam filters. On Tuesday, multiple Facebook users reported on Twitter that they found themselves unable to post articles from certain news outlets including Business Insider, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, and the Times of Israel. It's not clear exactly what has gone wrong, and Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
Alex Stamos, an outspoken former Facebook security exec, speculated that it might be caused by Facebook's shift to automated software after it sent its human content moderators home. "It looks like an anti-spam rule at FB is going haywire," he wrote on Twitter. "Facebook sent home content moderators yesterday, who generally can't [work from home] due to privacy commitments the company has made. We might be seeing the start of the machine learning going nuts with less human oversight. In a tweet, VP of Integrity Guy Rosen said: "We're on this -- this is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce. We're in the process of fixing and bringing all these posts back."
Alex Stamos, an outspoken former Facebook security exec, speculated that it might be caused by Facebook's shift to automated software after it sent its human content moderators home. "It looks like an anti-spam rule at FB is going haywire," he wrote on Twitter. "Facebook sent home content moderators yesterday, who generally can't [work from home] due to privacy commitments the company has made. We might be seeing the start of the machine learning going nuts with less human oversight. In a tweet, VP of Integrity Guy Rosen said: "We're on this -- this is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce. We're in the process of fixing and bringing all these posts back."
Not just coronavirus news [Re:A feature, not a bug (Score:2)
Not just coronavirus news. .
All sorts of posts got randomly either labeled "spam" or "violates community standards", including posts about cooking, home schooling, and links to newspaper and AP stories
A feature, not a bug
... no pun intended?
yep (Score:1)
They flagged two of my posts (Score:4, Informative)
Put up a pair of notes showing my home office setup for working remotely. I shared a number of hints on what worked for me and what to put your money on (great monitor, comfortable chair, good task lighting, decent phone). I had a link to an article about home office setups in one of the notes if you had to work at home due to COVID. I guess their AI (Artificial Idiots) routines themselves got infected. I replied back that I believed that they were flagged in error.
I know there was a lot of spam and incorrect information on the virus and they tried (and failed) to minimize that by going overboard.
Not just posts, but OAUTH integration with others (Score:1)
In addition to pulling down articles from fairly large sites, the bots also prevented users from logging into those other sites with their Facebook credentials.
I would presume that those here would understand what happened (bots trained poorly and overreacting), but the Facebook community (people trained poorly and overreacting) sees an article being pulled down and flagged as spam as authoritative and thus fake news.
Shocker (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Why is it news? Because it has "Coronavirus" attached to it?
Because this is news for nerds, and the news is that a rogue AI is censoring humans.
Re: (Score:2)
Because people still use Facebook and think it's a platform for publishing articles, so they still care about how well it performs or doesn't.
In other news, the price of buggy whips recently surged 20% but we're expecting it to fall in a few weeks. Just hang in there!
Re: Shocker (Score:2)
I don't know, I haven't been blocked (Score:2)
Lol, and I have been in Facebook jail more times then I can count. When it comes to this though,
Re: (Score:2)
There is real spam and fake news getting through at the same time, ie, scare mongering about ibuprofen. And don't trust anything from Slashdot of course, wonder how big the Slashdot readership is in the old folk's home?
Not just Coronavirus (Score:2)
I got the same message on a link to tor.com's monthly book giveaway. (John Scalzi's Redshirts)
The article has no mentions of Coronavirus.
It's not a bug. (Score:1)
This is a PEBKAC error.
It tells us that our perception is off.
Which is bloody damn obvious if you ever heard of the flu, yet nothing about a comparable reaction to it.
Re: (Score:2)
I heard about a flu in Spain once
"Quality" (Score:3)
It shows you the "quality" of Facebook's A.I. when poorly paid humans aren't there to help it.
Maybe, just maybe computerized censorship is a bad idea.
Quality control through inversion? (Score:2)
Perhaps the better solution for Facebook to combat fake news is to simply add a "verified by Facebook" badge on to any news article that has been verified as coming from a reputable source, otherwise just assume it's nonsense. The amount of disinformation spread through Facebook far exceeds actual news content.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is the news that comes from sharing posts. I don't even see "news" on Facebook if it exists, maybe I have it turned off. But lots of stuff shows up from friends sharing posts they read somewhere else. And so much of that is just flat out lies. The worst flaws from the behavior of crowds is amplified on social media.
ORLY (Score:1)
Bugs used to spread COVID-19 (Score:2)
By preventing users from getting (somewhat) accurate data on COVID-19, bugs are helping it spread!
Actual legitimate sources? (Score:1)
The "reliable medical sources" are part of the problem because no one has had the funding and balls to properly test IVC done for over 75 years now since FR Klenner. (The Riordan Clinic protocol is the current protocol
more than just news articles (Score:2)
A favorite musician of mine (Frank Turner) did a live show from his home yesterday that was massively shared by his fans. My share was declared spam by Facebook. Eventually, Facebook shut down his entire live stream because it was deemed spam. At least Dropkick Murphys were able to pull their live stream off OK.
Also with some other content (Score:1)