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Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

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Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#41

Post by mkjones »

premise wrote: post #38
jawngee wrote: post #16

This happens to me fairly often. Though I seem to get this warning more: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/374152_...

Wow, that’s pretty “nice.” P.S. {temporarily removed}

I don't think that's how sharing someone else's post works. If I make a friends-only post, and you share it to your friends, only the intersection of our friends can see it. I agree this is maybe not as clear as it could be on the UI, but I believe that's how it should work. If you find otherwise, would you mind filing a bug at www.facebook.com/whitehat?

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#42

Post by mkjones »

jachwe wrote: post #15

@nikcub I think it's not a coincidence. In fact FB declines Post and Messages for a while already. For example you can't post or comment and include a picture from imgur, while it (obviously) fine from other hosts. Thats what i experienced so far, but i can imagine there are other examples. That does not need to be censorship. Might be that they got an agreement about not hotlinking or hosting imgur images for copyri…

Do you have an example of FB blocking imgur images? We certainly don't intend to, and I'd like to get it fixed if we are for some reason.

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#43

Post by thespin »

AJ007 wrote: post #25
untog wrote: post #6

This is an isolated incident. "Irrelevant or Inappropriate" sounds like a euphemism for spam- if Facebook is fighting comment spam then I applaud them. Their algorithm just isn't quite right yet. No story here. "Is this censorship?" Are false positives on a spam filter censorship?

Also take in to consideration Facebook is trying to get companies to spend a lot on advertising their Facebook pages. One way for Facebook to do this is prevent users from making "irrelevant or inappropriate" on the advertiser's page. I have never seen a message like this before, but I rarely post comments on Facebook. I have, however, had issues with business associates spamming me. I found out firsthand just how di…

This is a very good summary.

Spamming is very central to FB. Lots of unsolicited email, by default. Noteworthy is the early battle with Google over who gets access to your email contacts/address book.

Second is the female audience. Without them, FB loses its appeal to many people. And would fail to have gained momentum at universities.

If Mr. Zuckerberg had only stolen the email addresses and photos of his fellow male students at Harvard for his photo-comparison "project", which he noted, judging from the looks of some of his classmates, might as well include photos of "farm animals", and posted them online for other students to see, I sincerely doubt many would have cared.

However, if you obtain photos of female students, email them and tell them you have posted photos of them online, and others can rate their appearance, you can bet almost every one is going to sign up to check things out. This is the "secret" of FB's success. Because once the female students have signed up, the male students are soon to follow. This is also why Google+ is a relative ghost town.

I like the idea of FB: being able to communicate with almost everyone via the web. Who would not like that? It's great. And it will certainly not die with FB.

I'm just not keen on the people behind FB.

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#44

Post by [deleted] »

reso wrote: post #9
untog wrote: post #6

This is an isolated incident. "Irrelevant or Inappropriate" sounds like a euphemism for spam- if Facebook is fighting comment spam then I applaud them. Their algorithm just isn't quite right yet. No story here. "Is this censorship?" Are false positives on a spam filter censorship?

It's exactly this. Let's not forget the quality of techcrunch comments improved by an order of magnitude as soon as they switched to Facebook's comment system, which has the best spam/troll detection I've ever seen. A tiny number of false positives is a fair price in my mind.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#45

Post by taligent »

thespin wrote: post #43
AJ007 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also take in to consideration Facebook is trying to get companies to spend a lot on advertising their Facebook pages. One way for Facebook to do this is prevent users from making "irrelevant or inappropriate" on the advertiser's page. I have never seen a message like this before, but I rarely post comments on Facebook. I have, however, had issues with business associates spamming me. I found out firsthand just how di…

This is a very good summary. Spamming is very central to FB. Lots of unsolicited email, by default. Noteworthy is the early battle with Google over who gets access to your email contacts/address book. Second is the female audience. Without them, FB loses its appeal to many people. And would fail to have gained momentum at universities. If Mr. Zuckerberg had only stolen the email addresses and photos of his fellow mal…

What an offensive and ridiculous comment.

Facebook is popular for infinitely more reasons than just "females are on it".

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#46

Post by taligent »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #2

Based on the anecdotal comments below the original post, it seems like there's a very high correlation between posts that get flagged as inappropriate by Facebook and those that mention Google+ or link to it. Which seems absurd, on the face of it, but I am going to have to experiment.

Interesting.

Based on anecdotal evidence I actually believe that there is a high correlation between flagged Facebook posts and alien abductions. It seems absurd sure. But I am going to have to experiment.

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#47

Post by waterlesscloud »

mkjones wrote: post #39
thespin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So FB tries to filter out ASCII art. It sounds to me like FB is trying to win over advertisers who really are not interested in the web, except to the extent they can profit from it. And they may learn FB has led them to believe there is much more potential than the results actually show. Meanwhile, the "consumers" using the web are generally interested in it. That includes ASCII art and LOL, as a means of communicat…

Another FB engineer here - I actually work on the system that caused this false positive. You're right that if we were actually trying to stop constructive discussion from happening, that would be bad. We're definitely not trying to do that - in fact, our goal is the exact opposite. Similarly, if we let through blatantly malicious or spammy comments, I think that would be bad as well. While I wish I could say we were…

A laudable goal, but for what definition of "constructive"? And PLEASE don't tell me that you guys think it will be the same definition for every site.

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#48

Post by taligent »

thespin wrote: post #29
lbrandy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, fb engineer here. This is exactly what's going on. If you recall, there were several articles written a few months back pertaining to comment spam, and very low quality comments (ascii art or 'LOOOOOL!!!') from subscribers. This is part of an effort to curb that and has likely gone awry. It only affects subscriber -> subscribee comments.

So FB tries to filter out ASCII art. It sounds to me like FB is trying to win over advertisers who really are not interested in the web, except to the extent they can profit from it. And they may learn FB has led them to believe there is much more potential than the results actually show. Meanwhile, the "consumers" using the web are generally interested in it. That includes ASCII art and LOL, as a means of communicat…

I think you need to adjust that tin-foil hat of yours.

Facebook isn't going anywhere. And it is because of decisions like this that it will continue to grow. People want a high SNR for comments. It encourages you to contribute more to a discussion not less.

If you want ASCII, LOL nonsense stick to 4chan.

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#49

Post by k-mcgrady »

thespin wrote: post #29
lbrandy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, fb engineer here. This is exactly what's going on. If you recall, there were several articles written a few months back pertaining to comment spam, and very low quality comments (ascii art or 'LOOOOOL!!!') from subscribers. This is part of an effort to curb that and has likely gone awry. It only affects subscriber -> subscribee comments.

So FB tries to filter out ASCII art. It sounds to me like FB is trying to win over advertisers who really are not interested in the web, except to the extent they can profit from it. And they may learn FB has led them to believe there is much more potential than the results actually show. Meanwhile, the "consumers" using the web are generally interested in it. That includes ASCII art and LOL, as a means of communicat…

It sounds like you've gotten it completely wrong. He didn't mean people can't use ASCII art of write 'lol'. If you have an account and have a lot of subscribers you will notice many comments (obviously spam) which write lol, hello, hi etc and are not contributing anything to the conversation. These are people that just want to expose their account in as many places as possible (spammers).

Facebook aren't trying to stop people using phrases like 'lol'. In this case the filter made a mistake. Big deal. They need to continue to improve it. Anyone calling this censorship is idiotic.

Re: Facebook Stops You From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments

#50

Post by taligent »

AJ007 wrote: post #25
untog wrote: post #6

This is an isolated incident. "Irrelevant or Inappropriate" sounds like a euphemism for spam- if Facebook is fighting comment spam then I applaud them. Their algorithm just isn't quite right yet. No story here. "Is this censorship?" Are false positives on a spam filter censorship?

Also take in to consideration Facebook is trying to get companies to spend a lot on advertising their Facebook pages. One way for Facebook to do this is prevent users from making "irrelevant or inappropriate" on the advertiser's page. I have never seen a message like this before, but I rarely post comments on Facebook. I have, however, had issues with business associates spamming me. I found out firsthand just how di…

You know what makes your point so hilarious is you could replace Facebook with "internet".

The internet is nothing more than a controlled place for spamming. The internet is for attractive girls to spam themselves to hundreds/thousands of males. The internet is trying to monetize all of this noise without scaring away its users.

Now let me ask you. Is that ALL the internet is for ? Is that ALL Facebook is for ?

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