4 ms·

The censorship is intentional, but the silence is a bug in the react code. You can look at the console in chrome devtools to see. There is an error message info

The censorship is intentional, but the silence is a bug in the react code. You can look at the console in chrome devtools to see. There is an error message informing the viewer that their message was censored. The message is incorrectly hidden when you send additional message. Also refresh the page and the messages disappear from the viewer.

shadowgovt 5y ago
As good as they are at 99.99% of what they do, almost every time a friend brings an example to me of Facebook doing something malicious, it turns out to be simple implementation error.
- ddalex 5y ago
  So that got winners of the C Underhanded Contest working there?
838812052807016 5y ago
How do you know the bug is unintentional?
Leparamour 5y ago
But it's that silence which deceives the user into thinking that the message never arriving is a technical malfunction and not intentional censoring. How many times, do you think the user would see the censoring message and be cool with it? Maybe once or twice, then they will stop using FB likely forever and tell all their friends. But does FB want that? Hell no, they want to retain the user for data collection and ad showing purposes. So how about just not showing the censoring message, make the user believe there was just a technical glitch and not insidious shadowbanning? I think this "bug" is intentional and done for plausible deniability in case of a lawsuit: "See, there is transparence. It was just a bug in the code. Human error."
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Re your last paragraph. Would that really work though? You subpoena the person who wrote the code and ask them under oath. I wouldn’t perjure myself to protect the company, would you?
martinbooth 5y ago
This is the correct explanation (thank you) There’s no intention to hide the fact that certain links are blocked. The bug is that the status of failed message sends (not limited to blocked links) only shows an exclamation mark against the last message on web.

shadowgovt 5y ago

As good as they are at 99.99% of what they do, almost every time a friend brings an example to me of Facebook doing something malicious, it turns out to be simple implementation error.

ddalex 5y ago
So that got winners of the C Underhanded Contest working there?

838812052807016 5y ago

How do you know the bug is unintentional?

Leparamour 5y ago

But it's that silence which deceives the user into thinking that the message never arriving is a technical malfunction and not intentional censoring. How many times, do you think the user would see the censoring message and be cool with it? Maybe once or twice, then they will stop using FB likely forever and tell all their friends. But does FB want that? Hell no, they want to retain the user for data collection and ad showing purposes. So how about just not showing the censoring message, make the user believe there was just a technical glitch and not insidious shadowbanning? I think this "bug" is intentional and done for plausible deniability in case of a lawsuit: "See, there is transparence. It was just a bug in the code. Human error."

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Re your last paragraph. Would that really work though? You subpoena the person who wrote the code and ask them under oath. I wouldn’t perjure myself to protect the company, would you?

martinbooth 5y ago

This is the correct explanation (thank you) There’s no intention to hide the fact that certain links are blocked. The bug is that the status of failed message sends (not limited to blocked links) only shows an exclamation mark against the last message on web.