Facebook blocks sharing of critical Guardian article

https://mobile.twitter.com/profcarroll/status/1045757268124467200

by afandian • 8 years ago

172 78 8 years ago

mobile.twitter.com

Rafuino• 8 years ago

Wow, FB keeps shooting itself in the foot. They'll likely blame an algorithm, not a deliberate human choice, but that's not a valid excuse.

whatever_dude• 8 years ago

Not an "excuse", but a valid explanation, don't you think?

When we offload decisions to algorithms, that's wha you get.

snaky• 8 years ago

They don't need any excuse.

cwkoss2• 8 years ago

That is pretty Orwellian of them. Are we at 'peak' facebook, or will they be able to continue growing from here?

Seems like trust and enthusiasm in their platform has been eroded to the point that they are much more vulnerable to competition than they were a year or two ago.

andybak• 8 years ago

Could you explain what exactly is Orwellian here? Not meaning to pick on you but you're currently the top comment that doesn't attempt to Chakrabarti engage with the topic.

I don't see much evidence of anything other than a crap algorithm here as yet.

cwkoss2• 8 years ago

Orwellian is often used to describe deliberate and malicious censorship of information, but I think perhaps this case is an even more accurate parallel: creating a convoluted automated system where all participants can believe they are acting ethically but the net effect is censorship of information which would damage the system and restriction of individual expression.

mklarmann• 8 years ago

Wow. This is too much!

wutbrodo2• 8 years ago

I'm surprised at how credulous everyone is being about this. Even assuming a maximally evil Facebook (which they make pretty easy to do...), they'd have to be incredibly stupid to be unaware of the Streisand effect and the fact that this would take off even more (and much more negatively) if they tried blocking it.

It seems a lot more plausible that this article is unusually widely shared, which is obvious since everyone on Facebook has some interest in Facebook...

afandian6• 8 years ago

Despite the complete moral vacuum there seems to be a facebook, I do still believe that this isn't deliberate. But big name companies do far worse things, and Facebook themmselves have done worse. And stupider, since you mention it. It is entirely plausible that they are intentionally suppressing the news.

I find it a fascinating side of the human psyche that it finds it hard to believe that "big brand name company" might be responsible for atrocities when history is littered with examples. Companies are only staffed by humans, after all.

wutbrodo2• 8 years ago

But big name companies do far worse things, and Facebook themmselves have done worse.

find it a fascinating side of the human psyche that it finds it hard to believe that "big brand name company" might be responsible for atrocities when history is littered with examples. Companies are only staffed by humans, after all.

I'm not sure why the majority of your comment is focusing on how plausible it is that they would do something evil. It couldn't be less relevant to my comment.

Like I said, my point doesn't rely on any assumptions about Facebook's morality as an organization, just some baseline of competency. I know organizations have done stupider things, but I can't think of a similar org taking an action whose _first-order_ effect would so obviously be the opposite of what they intended. It's far more common and far more plausible that they didn't consider the second-order PR effects of an algorithmically-enforced broad policy they have.

mrob• 8 years ago

Facebook is made up of individual people. Incompetent evil could be the protest of an employee who doesn't want to be evil but also doesn't want to get fired for obviously refusing an order.

CaliforniaKarl• 8 years ago

Hilarious, but I bet it's Hanlon's razor at work again:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

worldsayshi2• 8 years ago

Yeah, if they actually wanted to censor something they would do it silently, by not showing it in people's news feeds. Proving such practice exists would probably be near impossible without having access to the source code or core usage statistics.

dvtrn• 8 years ago

Looking at some of the tweets it seems FB has a mechanism that autoflags article links as spam if "too many people are trying to share" it.

This just makes me wonder exactly how automated that feature is, because surely a non-nominal number of people share current event links all the time about something political, sporting event, natural disaster. I wonder if it happens then, or is this a matter of recency....Streisand (there's got to be a better word for it than that) following the news of those 50million accounts being breached.

aphextron• 8 years ago

Yeah, if they actually wanted to censor something they would do it silently, by not showing it in people's news feeds.

Not really. Reddit does exactly this. Posts to /r/news are only allowed from a whitelist of "real news" sources.

mortenjorck• 8 years ago

Exactly. Even if an experiment could show something reliably not appearing in other timelines, it could easily enough be waved away with the standard throw-your-hands-up-and-say-‘algorithms’ explanation.

afandian6• 8 years ago

How many times do they need to be caught out before the razor gets blunt?

ucaetano5• 8 years ago

Oh, there are no bounds for human stupidity!

stcredzero5• 8 years ago

Hilarious, but I bet it's Hanlon's razor at work again

My corollary: If you want to instigate against adherents of Hanlon's Razor, it's best to use weaponized stupidity.

mic47• 8 years ago

Aaaand it's back (just tried to share it and it worked).

debt2• 8 years ago

It's astounding that educated tech journalists think this is malicious. Clearly, this is an algorithm.

Just like as a thought experiment, wouldn't it make more sense to allow the post to go through and then prevent everyone on Facebook from seeing it? Obviously, FB doesn't do that, but wouldn't that be a more sensible approach if they did do that type of thing?

3945492• 8 years ago

It's astounding that educated tech journalists think this is malicious. Clearly, this is an algorithm.

Who's claiming this is malicious? In the first couple of replies to the tweet, there's talk about how this is probably due to a poorly designed anti-spam algorithm that's badly in need of a whitelist.

That said, Facebook is responsible for the actions of their algorithm. If their algorithm starts blocking critical articles, it's still egg in their face.

yuliyp• 8 years ago

Who's claiming this is malicious?

brianmcc, afandian, mrob, shortexpresso, cwkoss, golemiprague in this discussion at least

tmalsburg22• 8 years ago

A spam-detection algorithm that doesn't whitelist pages like The Guardian? I have to say I find it hard to believe that they would be so incompetent.

threeseed• 8 years ago

Facebook can't be seen to be prioritising one news source over another.

So I can't imagine they have lists of any news sources and rely entirely on user signals to determine the quality of a source.

debt2• 8 years ago

A whitelist? Huh? What is this the 90's?

I'm pretty sure the algorithms use something more intelligent than a whitelist. A whitelist would be a major loophole in a spam algorithm.

wesleytodd• 8 years ago

What is amazing to me is that twitter still does not have a solution for sharing mobile links to desktop users. It is a really bad user experience.

onychomys• 8 years ago

I realized the other day that wikipedia doesn't either. You'd think it wouldn't be all that hard to redirect in the year 2018, but apparently it is.

LinuxBender• 8 years ago

Does FB have a team dedicated to responding on HN yet?

kerng• 8 years ago

This is sadly funny. It's probably a legitimate feature to block spam - timing and what it is about is just highlighting the issues with large scale automation and data analysis. Must be a tough day and upcoming weeks at Facebook....

brianmcc5• 8 years ago

Whether malice or incompetence the key thing is that it's blocking a legit post with no recourse. That's a serious problem given that it's such a core sharing platform for so many people.

lgeorget7• 8 years ago

On the other hand, Facebook is not a soapbox on a public place, it's a website owned and hosted by a private company which has precise criteria to decide which publications are more desirable than others.

noobiemcfoob• 8 years ago

Where is this precise criteria? Can anyone explain it for a layperson? While we all know it is the aggregation of many different algorithms at work, the results of those algorithms have consequences. Claiming that it's fine because the algorithm exists is begging the question.

stale20022• 8 years ago

If Facebook is a publishing company, then they should be treated as such.

They should lose their immunity to lawsuits for user created content on their publishing platform.

brianmcc5• 8 years ago

But that is a problem that's my point. They sell themselves as allowing us to 'connect' - bless their kind selfless hearts - then filter, prioritize, and suppress what we choose to connect with.

At this stage 'private company yada yada yada' is wilfully missing the point of just how much Facebook is the social media entity for a good chunk of the world.

denzil_correa• 8 years ago

which has precise criteria to decide which publications are more desirable than others.

The issue is that we don't know these criteria.

stcredzero5• 8 years ago

Whether malice or incompetence the key thing is that it's blocking a legit post with no recourse.

Is The Guardian a legit source? What does legit source even mean? As far as I can tell, it means, "Has a strong brand." Given what we know about brand decay and bait and switch, are our criteria even remotely useful and valid? From what I've seen, I don't think so. It seems like many "legit" news sources with failing business models are cashing in their brand reputation, while it lasts, for some link-baiting and public manipulation.

ahakki• 8 years ago

It is deemed a legit source on the matter because the info in the article is correct.

gaius• 8 years ago

Is The Guardian a legit source?

It’s readership numbers have been declining and some of its writers churn out complete gibberish but it has been around for a long time and is generally considered to be a serious newspaper in the U.K.

Disclaimer: worked on their website in the late ‘90’s

liftbigweights• 8 years ago

What does legit source even mean?

It used to mean something that was professionally run and trusted. Something that had earned people's trust.

Unfortunately, now it means "those who I agree with" because we live in a highly partisan environment - which the "trusted sources" had a hand in creating.

MrsPeaches• 8 years ago

It seems like The Guardian is actually trying out new things that seem to be working. Interesting article about them here: https://digiday.com/media/guardian-improbably-put-way-path-p...

brianmcc5• 8 years ago

It's one of the UK's leading broadsheets with nigh on 200 years behind it. Reasonable and valid complaints about mainstream media aside, this is about as legit as it gets!

ranranrun2• 8 years ago

So Facebook is trying to censor a story that they themselves made public just a few hours ago? Guardian thinks a bit too much of itself.

calcifer• 8 years ago

Guardian didn't say censor, they said block, which is factual.

Nice strawman though.

ranranrun2• 8 years ago

So Facebook is trying to block a story that they themselves made public just a few hours ago?

0xmohit• 8 years ago

    Some users are reporting that they are unable to post today’s
    big story about a security breach affecting 50 million
    Facebook users. The issue appears to only affect particular
    stories from certain outlets, at this time one story from The
    Guardian and one from the Associated Press, both reputable
    press outlets.
    ...
    The situation is another example of Facebook’s automated
    content flagging tools marking legitimate content as
    illegitimate, in this case calling it spam.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/facebook-blocks-guardian-s...

shortexpresso• 8 years ago

The power and domination can not accept critics. All big companies are involved in war communication on their own activities. FB just reacts as Monsanto or Texaco/Chevron do with all possible means.

Facebook blocks sharing of critical Guardian article

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