[HN Gopher] Facebook banned website that links to critical artic...
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Facebook banned website that links to critical article, claims
phishing
Author : jrflowers
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-04-07 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bsky.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (bsky.app)
| vorticalbox wrote:
| On one hand it's not great to censor but on the other it's their
| platform and they would like to protect it.
| piva00 wrote:
| They shouldn't be underhanded about it then, misrepresenting as
| phishing just make them even more spineless.
|
| If they had been clear about it, posting a warning "we consider
| this post detrimental to our business" go ahead and censor it,
| being underhanded just made it stink much, much more.
| smt88 wrote:
| They have a right to protect their platform, and we have a
| responsibility to criticize them publicly when they lie about
| it or do it in a harmful way.
| sud069 wrote:
| I have seen ads on facebook that are phising links. lol
| partitioned wrote:
| exactly. have you ever tried to watch youtube without adblock?
| I started reporting them when they temporarily were able to get
| around adblock because they were obvious scams, but thats 90%
| of the ads on there. google/facebook ads are barely above
| pornsite advertisements as of 2024.
|
| the only people clicking on them are extremely low info olds
| passwordoops wrote:
| My funniest instance was reporting an obvious crypto scam as
| potential SPAM or fraud to LinkedIn. It featured Wayne
| Gretzky promoting a can't-miss investment of lifetime.
|
| It took less than 10 minutes for the Safety and Security team
| to thank me for the report, but that the ad was determined to
| be legit
| kstrauser wrote:
| Legit means the payment cleared.
| lupire wrote:
| Wayne Gretsky is on MGM gambling ads on TV. Putting us
| image in crypto scams isn't any worse than his "legit" ads.
| sud069 wrote:
| Those ads on facebook for some random dating site, i had
| stumbled upon 10-15 ads in few hours while scrolling reels. I
| reported each one of them, until I got tired and uninstalled
| facebook ffs.
|
| The weird thing about some of those ads were full NSFW
| content. Literally Porn. During reporitng the ads, it says
| "It was targeted to People from the age of 19 - 30, living in
| country <Some Asian Country>. It was a third world country.
| It seems like they don't fukin care who promotes what
| contents in such countries.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This is the entire text of the linked Bluesky post (which is part
| of several threads):
|
| > Looks like it a few domains, including thehandbasket.co, were
| mistakenly classified as a phishing site, which has since been
| corrected as Andy mentioned. Unfortunately, at our scale, we get
| false positives on safety measures all the time. Apologies for
| the trouble.
|
| False positive that was already corrected at the time is was
| posted on Bluesky and corrected long before it was posted here on
| HN.
|
| This all happened and was fixed days ago, but people are still
| trying to post headlines that imply something more nefarious is
| still happening.
|
| There is no story here, just journalists trying to stir up
| controversy and imply malice. Unfortunately this is a valid
| tactic for driving attention to small substacks and similar
| outlets who wouldn't otherwise be noteworthy. Getting "banned" by
| Facebook is the most effective thing they could ask for to gain
| more exposure, as evidenced by the way this has shot to number 1
| on Hacker News despite having been corrected days ago.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Unfortunately, at our scale, we get false positives on safety
| measures all the time.
|
| At this point, the "at our scale ..." argument is such an
| arrogant excuse for doing damage all over the world. If I can't
| ensure people are treated fairly, don't get harassed, etc,
| maybe it's not a viable business then. Stop offloading all
| kinds of externalities onto the public.
| root_axis wrote:
| The "doing damage all over the world" framing makes no sense
| here. Blocking a link on your own website is not an
| externality by definition.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Think of Myanmar
|
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-
| faceb...
| lupire wrote:
| So, Facebook allowing content is bad, and Facebook not
| allowing content is also bad?
| 3np wrote:
| Well, yeah. No entity should be in the centrally
| authoritative position that Meta alongside a handful of
| other companies is.
|
| Moderation and filtering needs to be decoupled from
| content hosting and authn/authz. This is a major part
| making me optimistic about bluesky/atproto.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| In most cases I would agree, but in this case they actually
| did do reputational damage. There are people asking the
| site owners why the site is considered insecure.
| root_axis wrote:
| I didn't consider that aspect. I admit that does sound
| frustrating from the perspective of the site owner.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| What are they supposed to do? Not have any automated
| filtering? Just shut down when the site gets too big.
|
| I'm not a fan of these privately owned social media platforms
| with no oversight, fairness, or recourse for the public, but
| people want corporate social media and I'm not sure what
| these giants are supposed to do or what people even want
| here.
| tomrod wrote:
| > What are they supposed to do? Not have any automated
| filtering? Just shut down when the site gets too big[?]
|
| Maybe? It's not that crazy of an idea that if you can't
| serve your clients that you are put out of business?
| wbl wrote:
| But they do serve their clients. We don't shut down
| hospitals because one doctor misses a diagnosis.
| exe34 wrote:
| Well let the magic hand of the market decide! I'm sure
| people will be flocking out any time now and advertising
| revenue will dry up!
| barbazoo wrote:
| They're supposed to not do things like
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-
| faceb...
| lokar wrote:
| The best (but not necessarily good) answer I see is that ad
| supported social media can't meet the minimum bar for
| effective moderation and be profitable, then it should be
| shut down as a nuisance. Not all business models have a
| right to exist.
|
| Perhaps if free/ad was not workable we could see
| subscription services with better moderation. If not
| (people won't pay), then it's not actually worth that much
| to users so it's fine to let it die.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > What are they supposed to do? Not have any automated
| filtering?
|
| Just give the user a warning that Facebook sees some
| likelihood that the site is a phishing site, and let the
| user decide by himself whether he wants to follow the link
| or not.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| What sounds a over man show do with no revenue?
| jahewson wrote:
| This piece of "journalism" isn't fair either though. Should
| we shut down CNN too?
| lupire wrote:
| How many people would follow links to that website if
| Facebook didn't exist? Fewer than of Facebook existed as
| accidentally banned them for one day.
| piva00 wrote:
| We can't know since history has no ifs and we have no idea
| what else could have been in place of Facebook.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| At that scale, they have the resources to deal with it.
| zazazache wrote:
| Wrong, first they blocked the Kansas Reflector but when they
| fixed that the "offending" column was still blocked. That
| column was reposted by someone else and their whole website was
| also blocked.
|
| There is controversy and malice
| Aurornis wrote:
| The quote in my post was _verbatim copy and paste of the
| linked BlueSky post_.
|
| If you have different information, perhaps post a valid
| source here rather than saying "wrong" and then injecting
| something else. I literally just copy and pasted the linked
| post text.
|
| The linked post is halfway through a BlueSky thread that has
| a screenshot of a part of a Twitter thread about a link to
| something else that I can't click. Nothing screams "social
| media ragebait mill" like a long chain of unclickable
| screenshots to some ragebait take about some story that
| happened elsewhere.
| jrflowers wrote:
| I think GP may have been responding to this
|
| > There is no story here, just journalists trying to stir
| up controversy and imply malice.
|
| Which was not a quote
|
| Assuming you're not familiar with this story at all, here
| is some previous discussion of the numerous events in which
| the critical article was stopped from being shared on
| meta's platform.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39945811
| shortformblog wrote:
| Tell me, how does the same story, reposted in three different
| places, conveying criticism about the source of the blocking,
| lead to phishing issues on three different domains?
|
| It is clearly underplaying questionable behavior that has
| caused serious problems for a media outlet that were only fixed
| because this got attention.
| lupire wrote:
| Obviously because something in the content triggered the
| phishing filter.
| shortformblog wrote:
| And what's in the content that would trigger phishing?
| Among what you'll find in the piece:
|
| - Criticism of Facebook's ad policies and functions
|
| - Discussion of climate change issues
|
| - Links to Vox, government sources, and a bunch of PBS
| sites
|
| https://kansasreflector.com/2024/04/04/when-facebook-
| fails-l...
|
| This gets blocked, yet I see significantly spammier links
| on Facebook by accident. To me, the real issue is likely
| that their filters aren't very good.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| original Kansas Reflector post:
|
| _Facebook blocked local news site for posting an editorial
| critical of them_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39936960
| bluelouie wrote:
| This reminds me of how this website that a friend runs was banned
| from Facebook:
|
| https://www.rs21.org.uk (small UK socialist group)
|
| After they posted - guess what - an article critical of Facebook:
|
| "How Facebook tried to censor indigenous struggle"
| https://www.rs21.org.uk/2020/10/07/how-facebook-tried-to-cen...
|
| Fits a pattern, I think...
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(page generated 2024-04-07 23:01 UTC)