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The policing of private messages is not new or sudden. Facebook has censored "offensive" (yet legal) private messages for years. One can assume they also alread
by mcbits 10y ago
The policing of private messages is not new or sudden. Facebook has censored "offensive" (yet legal) private messages for years. One can assume they also already detect and report criminal activity to some degree. But it's understandable that they wouldn't want to shine the spotlight on this practice.
- lostlogin 10y agoFor a while there it was headline news every time a breastfeeding mother got censored.
- mcbits 10y agoAFAIK those are images posted publicly or semi-publicly and getting flagged by prudes, or at least that's how it gets portrayed. But my friend sent a series of Middle East carnage images to me in "private" messages, and they were removed a few days later with a message about being inappropriate for the site. Neither of us flagged them.
- p49k 10y agoThose same photos might have just been posted elsewhere on Facebook publicly and flagged there. Not that I am supporting Facebook or censorship or anything, but on the technical aspect, maybe there's an explanation that doesn't involve reading the private messages.
- titraprutr 10y agoThere is an easy to prove that they do read private messages. Send a private message with a link that points to your private website. Wait a few minutes and you should see in your server's logs that Facebook's bot is trying to crawl that url.
- p49k 10y agoTrue, but they also show a preview of the page in the message, which would require fetching it. Pretty much every messaging service does that now. Also, there are legitimate reasons to scan URLs (malware, for example). Again, not trying to defend Facebook or absolve them of violating privacy, just saying that for these specific criticisms, there are technical explanations.
- RodericDay 10y agoIf you're scanning the URL for malware, why wouldn't you pick up some data mining info for the involved users while at it?
- disgruntledphd2 10y agoBecause that takes (a lot) more effort, and you're on a schedule?
- RodericDay 10y agoYeah but you make money if you do, even if you spend the resources. This is not really a convincing answer.
- angry-hacker 10y agoI know I was having difficulties sharing a link to porn video. I was using private message, but it didn't let me to send the damn link.