Facebook Says It's Filtering Comments For Spam, Not Censoring Them

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.

positive way but not spam

[Anonymous Coward]

if it triggered a spam filter, why don't they just say that comment was spam-like but ask the user to post in a positive way.

If only.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Actually, they do censor.

[SuricouRaven]

It's not always clear what motives are. For example, on MSN, you can't mention any address ending in no-ip.org. Microsoft did it, so I gather, because some botnet was using no-ip.org dynamic addresses and spreading via IM (One of those 'go to mysite.no-ip.org/pictures_of_the_holiday.exe' things I imagine), but it's still very annoying for people like me who have a legitimate use for no-ip.org subdomains.

Re:Why do intelligent people (continue to) use FB?

[BasilBrush]

Because I can honestly say it's improved my quality of life. Thanks to they dynamics of Facebook I've:

1) Had a change of career.
2) I went to live in a very desirable foreign country for 2 years.
3) I manage to keep in touch with many more friends than I could possibly do before.
4) I get invited to social events that I wouldn't have heard about before.
5) My professional network is wide, and I hear about a lot of things that are useful to me professionally.
etc.

For sure it can be a time-sink. As can Slashdot. As can any web-site that keeps you engaged. If it wasn't useful and/or enjoyable it wouldn't be a time-sink.