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Comment by finiteloop | Hacker News Reader

This is Bret Taylor, CTO of Facebook. I responded on the other thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1932259), but cross-posting here since it is largely about the same issue.

This was a mistake on our part. In the process of dealing with a routine trademark violation issue regarding some links posted to Facebook, we inadvertently blocked all mentions of the phrase "lamebook" on Facebook. We are committed to promoting free expression on Facebook. We apologize for our mistake in this case, and we are working to fix the process that led to this happening.

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If the TechCrunch article is to be believed, Facebook gives itself the power to filter and block outbound private emails between users based on its content.

> Not only is it currently impossible to share a Lamebook link to your News Feed or a friend’s Facebook Wall — you can’t even include them as part of a direct message or email to friends

I'm not on Facebook so I don't really know; if I'm wrong about this then I'm sorry.

But if it's true, it's crazy. Private communication between people that the system knows

1) are human (as opposed to an automatic spamming engine)

2) mutually declared themselves to be "friends"

should not be monitored in any way.

If the recipient wants to set up a filter then it's fine, but if messages are blocked at the source then it's very disturbing.

Everyone used to assume that Big Brother nightmares were imaginary and overblown; now that Facebook is becoming the main communication channel between some people, those nightmares are real...?

Not every computer is guaranteed to be free of malicious software capable of acting on behalf of the individual. This necessitates that security filters operate on private communications. This is true for all messaging products.

An example of why this filtering exists: http://blog.trendmicro.com/koobface-makes-a-comeback/

If you are committed to promoting free expression why do you have a feature on your site that can obliterate mentions of a certain phrase? Would you have noticed that you "inadvertently" blocked all mentions of lamebook if there wasn't any publicity about this blocking?

Probably so they can obliterate mentions of spam domains. HN has a similar feature, except that one can also stealth-ban your account for posting links to certain sites. Until we get strong AI, any high-traffic site where users can post links will need such a feature.

It's one thing to nuke links, but this apparently went beyond that. From the TC comments:

"Wow, you can't type ANY form of lamebook.com, lamebook DOT com, lame+book DOT com...NOTHING! How can I trust Facebook as a messaging system if it's going to block entire words and phrases?!? What if I just wanted to ask my friends what they think about the Lamebook case?? WTF"

This would be like if I asked you for examples of which sites were banned, and you couldn't even post to tell me.

We use it to block spam and malware, typically to block mentions of URLs that are, e.g, links to malware downloads.

You use it to block spam and malware, yes. But you've just shown that you use it for other purposes as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there also an issue with The Pirate Bay on this too? That's neither spam nor malware (not that I'm defending what it is...), so it seems odd to act like this is just for protecting users.

I call bull on this statement. I once tried to send my friend a perfectly harmless link (no spam, no viruses, no malware or anything) and I couldn't because FB blocked it. The link contained a couple of images from South Park.

I can't imagine using the new FB mail for my communication if FB will censor the crap out of it.

Well, we'll accept anything in the name of security.

Facebook operates in some countries in which certain speech is illegal, such as denial of the Holocaust in Germany. IIRC they comply with the nation's laws in each country they operate in.

In almost all countries (where appliable) these laws only apply to "public" speach. If you're just mailing a friend you can write there whatsoever.

So there is no reason to censor messages themselves.

> why do you have a feature on your site that can obliterate mentions of a certain phrase?

It's called database access, and every CTO has it, ultimately. That said, I doubt there is a big red button sitting like a blank check for the CTO to nuke phrases that contract his sphincter. That said, what the hell do I know?

This feature "filters" comments as they're made, it's most definitely something that was built as a feature he even says as much, it's not "database access", it's a built in feature for filtering (censoring) bad content. It doesn't remove old mentions, it disallows future mentions.

I love that you can imagine the CTO running through the database blocking all mentions of lamebook in real time.

According to the article, in addition to blocking links, the company's fan page was also removed. Is this also part of the phrase blocking routine? (This is a genuine question and not an antagonistic attempt.)

That's great to hear, Bret. A lot of us are wary of FB because of stories like this. A followup about the fix to the process that led to this happening would be much appreciated.

That would be really nice and open of them - but for your own sake please don't hold your breath :)

an oversight by facebook ?, really ?, a mistake ? ... so you just decided for the hell of it to ban all links to <random url> and <random url> just happened to be lamebook!!!, what an unreal coincidence.

Y'know what's really lame?, expecting anyone to believe that crap ...

"The rumors of my censorship have been greatly exaggerated!"

Come on. There are plenty of facebook hater groups (such as http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Hate-Facebook/377167999094) on facebook.

This ought to be everyone's prior when something like this happens. Bugs are common, censorship is not, particularly for tech companies.

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