Facebook is censoring links to liberal stories.

[TalkingDog]

Last edited Tue Sep 11, 2012, 04:36 AM - Edit history (1)

At first I thought it was one of those bugs a site will have. Every once in a while I would post a story on a liberal subject or from Mother Jones, etc. And after a minute or two the link would disappear, leaving only a cryptic status message.

I thought I was being paranoid when I began to notice that the non-issue links or posts of cute kittens, memes, YouTube were never the ones that disappeared.

Yesterday I posted this link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/13/1074013/-Hilarious-VA-Right-Wingnut-Sen-Ryan-McDougle-Gets-a-Taste-of-His-Own-Transvaginal-Medicine- from Daily Kos. It stayed and a couple of people commented on it.

This morning, one of my fb friends said the link was not working. So, I tried it. Sure enough, it started the process, then simply stopped.

I looked the story up on a search engine and clicked the link, no problem. I then pasted that link (the same link btw) into Facebook. The story and thumbnail showed up. I clicked the link. Not Working.

Now, to be fair, I don't post links to, say, Freeperville, so I don't know if those have a habit of disappearing too.

[knitter4democracy]

1. I've had that happen, too.

Odd.

[TheWraith]

2. Did said links all include words like "vaginal"? nt

[TalkingDog]

3. Ha! No. Some included subversive things about rights, labor, the prison industrial complex, the 1%

and a very wide variety of liberal and progressive issues.

[TheWraith]

7. I still doubt it has anything to do with censorship. nt

[MerryBlooms]

4. My FB page is full of liberal links and so are most of my friends'.

I haven't had any deletions, nor have I noticed my friends' pages having issues. We also post and link to quite a few provocative pics and so far, none have been deleted.

Wonder what the deal is. Is there a personal setting on your FB acct. or profile that is checked that shouldn't be?

[onenote]

5. I was wondering the same thing

I've never experienced a content-based deletion of anything I've posted on FB. Occasionally, when I include a link (such as to a youtube video) in a comment (rather than in a post on my wall), it disappears. But its not based on the content -- I think its a setting issue.

In any event, the OP's title is a bit hyperbolic. If there was a pattern of FB "censoring links to liberal stories" postings about it would be all over FB and the web. And I'm having trouble believing that out of 1/2 billion users, FB has singled out the OP.

[MerryBlooms]

20. I think everytime FB makes a change, you need to check your settings.

I've had to reset mine a couple of times- maybe that's it?

[truebrit71]

6. Same for me...I've never had a problem??

..Maybe they don't think I'm liberal enough???

[MerryBlooms]

21. :P Maybe!

[snooper2]

8. When somebody uses verbiage like "it started the process, then simply stopped." in this context

My first inclination is to think user error FYI

[belcffub]

9. years working in IT has shown that usually the PEBKAC

maybe not here... but if I were a betting person...

[snooper2]

12. Thats a nicer term than the ID ten T error I learned about in the early 90's

[ladywnch]

13. this one I don't know. PEBKAC I remember too.

[hootinholler]

15. Spell it out

ID ten T - ID 10 T - ID10T

[ladywnch]

16. ah. thanx. now I feel like one.

[hootinholler]

17. It was a 'form' one place I worked

Call summaries sometimes included "user filed ID-10-T form after call"

[negativenihil]

10. i'm sorry but...

this sounds like a user error.

I post liberal links every day, and never have posts disappear like you're describing. It's not good buisness to make an effort to censor content your users submit - esp when your entire business model is built around data mining FROM your users content.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. I don't do politics on that site although many 'friends' do and I get liberal links from

around the world daily. In many languages.

[dgibby]

14. The site you linked to

has been scrubbed of all comments related to that subject matter. Looks like the Senator has left the kitchen 'cause he can't take the heat!

[Xithras]

18. It may be their spam filter

Any Facebook post that contains a link also has a "Report As Spam" link included. If enough people report it as spam, the post is removed. That part is pretty straightforward, and a lot of people understand it, but there's a second component to their spam system. Once a link is flagged as spam, ANY other attempts by other people to post that link are ALSO flagged as spam and automatically removed.

So, Person A in California posts a link to a liberal news story. Among their 550 "friends", or the roughly 10,000 friends of friends who can see that story, several dozen conservatives are upset by it and flag it as spam. Eventually the percentage of reports is high enough that Facebook automatically removes the post.

An hour later, Person B in Minnesota, who has never met Person A and has no connection to them, also stumbles across the same story and posts it to THEIR wall. Facebook recognizes the link as having been flagged as spam earlier, and automatically shuts it down...even if none of Person B's friends complain about it. Once their system decides that a particular link is spam, all 845 million Facebook users are blocked from posting it on their system.

[starroute]

19. I once had Facebook refuse to accept a link to the Pirate Bay

It wasn't anything that might have infringed copyright -- I think it was to a statement from Anonymous that had been posted there. But when I hit Enter, I got some error message about the link being impermissible. Even when I tried using a link shortener and posting it that way, the same message showed up.

It doesn't sound like this could be the case with what you describe. But Facebook definitely does have a blacklist of stuff that will not go through.