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Comment by alecmuffett | Hacker News Reader

Hi, my name's Alec, I work as a software engineer for Facebook. Apologies for what you observed, it was due to an automatic system miscategorising the Tor download site. We've fixed the issue, given our software a stern talking-to, and are working to ensure that it does not happen again.

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I sent a message to FB noting the "mis-categorization" on May 26.

How long did it take to fix the issue? Assuming that it is a simple task to fix, then why was it not fixed when I reported it on May 26th nor when I reported it again on June 24th?

Hi there; I don't know the answer to that question yet, but I will be investigating the matter next week and will take action accordingly. Thank you for the details and for taking the time to do that, it's appreciated.

FWIW, a bug appears to exist, as the following (perfectly safe) link also triggered the warning:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=https://w...

Note the irony of http://google.com/safebrowsing triggering a Facebook "unsafe link" security warning. Looks like the code is using a substring match, which might be incorrect logic.

Are your posts are Turing test? ;)

I'm not a bot, but my English teachers always taught me not to put two verbs in one sentence.

Good thing you put 3 verbs in your sentence then ;)

Sorry, Alec. I'm not buying into the whole customer service corporate doublespeak routine. Your words sound like those of an uninformed pawn, a tool implemented by nobility, a means to an end.

He can't be an uninformed pawn of his corporate masters and be engaged in doublespeak at the same time.

Hush. The existential contradiction is part of The Conspriacy!

Not true. An employee can adhere to a company policy without understanding the reason a given policy exists. It's certainly possible to carry out orders, and adhere to a script, with unquestioning obedience.

Fair enough I guess...

FB is a huge company now. Going through the reporting process, assigning to a dev, they get around to it after other assignments, goes to QA queue, it's tested, it'll get pushed out in a release. That'll take a month, easy. I don't smell conspiracy, I just smell software development.

Can I ask you, what category was Tor put into?

Could you provide disclosure regarding how this categorization system works?

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