9 ms·

Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

316 points by dusted 5y ago

Just try and share the link on facebook, it's blocked as spam. It's next to impossible to believe that this is not deliberate, considering what kind of fake news, and scams they happily take money to advertise and spread.

jdrc 5y ago
do they also block it in messenger? afaik they block any url pattern that people tend to share often
learndeeply 5y ago
Why would facebook block an open source initiative, considering that they've contributed a ton of open source software (react, graphql, pytorch, etc)? The more simple explanation is that an automated detector misclassified the link because it shares patterns with spam links.
- arboles 5y ago
  - hobofan 5y ago
    Could you please explain why you think this is being naive? Same as GP, I don't see what interest Facebook would have in blocking this initiative. The impact the initiative would have would have very little impact on Facebook's business. Their moat is their userbase and no amount of good "public code" would change that.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  open source software from bigco it's only a smoke and mirrors to make it look like they are nice. https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/ and the current legislation trends in the EU are not fun, because they are not able to drive the narrative.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    First, whether you like React or not, it's hard to argue that the most popular JavaScript framework is "just smoke and mirrors". It might be great PR, but there's also a lot of substance to it. Second, even if publiccode.eu doesn't help Facebook in any way, that's not evidence that they have motive to intentionally block it. You'd have to demonstrate that they have some reason to want the initiative to fail, not just claim they don't care.
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      Does metabook create government related software? I can understand such behaviour from Microsoft, not sure what the motivation would be for FB
      - emilz0r 5y ago
        Workplace from Meta is not targeted specifically for governments, but are used by government orgs I've worked at.
  - e-clinton 5y ago
    “open source software from bigco it's only a smoke and mirrors to make it look like they are nice.” So the React ecosystem is smoke and mirrors? GraphQL?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I mean... yes. This is the case with Microsoft, Apple, Google and pretty much anyone else on the Fortune 500 that owns a software stack. I still find it hard to believe Facebook would go out of their way to intentionally flag random political articles for seemingly minimal gain.
- Vinnl 5y ago
  Another alternative explanation that wouldn't require Facebook's malice, assuming that this initiative does have its opponents, is that Facebook's some reporting tools were weaponised, i.e. lots of false reports caused the automated detector to misclassify it. (I don't actually expect it to have such staunch opponents, though, so the misclassification is probably due to other reasons.)
JimmyAxod 5y ago
.eu isn’t the most legitimate looking domain. They probably just have some rules around which domains tend to be spam/scam/bs
- fermigier 5y ago
  ".eu isn’t the most legitimate looking domain." -> Is this based on actual and specific information ?
  - labster 5y ago
    Brexit means Brexit.
  - dncornholio 5y ago
    A few years ago I changed the domain of a customers website from .eu to .nl because it refused to show up in Google. Anecdotal evidence suggests .eu is not a good domain name for your business.
- atoav 5y ago
  Let me guess: You are not from the EU? .eu domains are not uncommon over here.
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  .eu domains are somewhat common; from a quick grep of my Firefox history: adamj.eu alsd.eu alternatives.eu belleslettres.eu bergfreunde.eu berthub.eu bitsnbites.eu bizin.eu btcdirect.eu carlschwan.eu ceridap.eu coolblue.eu cpcwiki.eu cubilis.eu datadoghq.eu doshaven.eu epicompany.eu eui.eu eupl.eu euplf.eu eurescrossborder.eu europa.eu forum.eu framelabs.eu gdprhub.eu geizhals.eu gmic.eu hownormalami.eu ibabs.eu inflation.eu itgovernance.eu johnmathews.eu juliareda.eu list.eu maxlath.eu noyb.eu politico.eu postgresql.eu publiccode.eu qonto.eu sagefund.eu secondwheels.eu sifted.eu skikk.eu successfactors.eu surnamemap.eu tjinstoko.eu xahteiwi.eu z80cpu.eu Some of these are fairly small/obscure; some are fairly significant: europe.eu is the site for a lot of what the EU does; politico.eu is a well known media organisation; coolblue.eu is major Dutch retail business, etc.
- 5y ago
forgotmypw17 5y ago
Facebook is fighting against the "huge target on its back" effect. The bigger of an audience you are, the more interest there is in posting abusive content, whether it's spam, trolling, or something else. The result is usually that you end up digging a bigger and bigger moat around your submission and curation process, so that your service is not completely flooded with crap. I think this is what you are seeing here, rather than censorship of this specific link or cause. I once posted a URL to a forum site I was developing for a community to Facebook, and somehow it set off the spam detector. For the next several months, I would get regular notices that a comment I left on another group's discussion was marked as spam, and was not visible to anyone else. I was posting regular comments, without links, apolitical, not critical of anyone, just adding to the discussion. The notices have since stopped, but I still rarely get any response to my comments, and anything I post to my profile's feed usually gets "ignored" completely, while in the past I'd get a pretty stable number of likes from friends (in the low double digits or high single digits.) As someone who has moderated a decent size sub-reddit in the past, I understand that there's no malicious intent on Facebook's part in this. They are just so much bigger than this one individual that they simply cannot see me, the same way I cannot see a bacteria, and may not notice a tiny gnat.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Indeed. It's possible that there's someone maliciously flagging your link as spam, but to a great extent Facebook and Twitter etc do not think deeply beyond "does this look like spam / is this getting reported as spam a lot". Try setting up a publiccode Facebook page and see if that gets flagged.
- madsbuch 5y ago
  They should hire more people to do things they have not successfully automated! Oh, maybe that would carve too much into the profit margin? Luckily we do have governance that can make companies comply with doing ethical business -- even though they don't hit bulls eyes every time.
  - IntrepidWorm 5y ago
    Legally, the government can force compliance by large technical companies. In practice, there's no current chance of that happening. Believing that Facebook, Google, Twitter et. al. are beholden to the government given the past several years is somewhat laughable. Government is slow, and tech business is fast. Our politicians cannot keep up, even when they try.
mdoms 5y ago
What link? Can you provide a little background for those of us who have no idea what you're talking about?
- em-bee 5y ago
  https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/
  - fsflover 5y ago
    And discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31183882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31183882.
  - w-m 5y ago
    Trying to sign this, I got a 429 "too many requests" when clicking on confirm, and something about 20 per 1 hour. Did I sign, or didn't I? Reloading the page tells me there's no pending confirmation ID.
tremon 5y ago
Why would it not be spam? If many accounts are sending that link to their contacts, doesn't that exactly mimic bot-spam?
- madsbuch 5y ago
  Absolutely not. Proposing that just because something mimics something then it equates it is so absurd.
- seb1204 5y ago
  I thought this is what trending means.
ajrbyers 5y ago
I was able to post it recently on FB, from the UK.
lakomen 5y ago
Something I wrote in the last 2 weeks on fb was autoflagged as spam. As a result I set my account to be deleted. I thought I was shadow banned. When I reactivated it yesterday I received the post marked as spam, object or confirm wizard. Idk if that's new. But it does feel like they're training a new AI and crowdsourcing that process. But then again they might genuinely suppress this initiative, idk.
Proven 5y ago
bennyp101 5y ago
When you say 'blocked as spam' - I Just pasted it into a new post, and it worked just fine? Or do you mean other people can't see it?
matthewmacleod 5y ago
On the contrary, it's not even slightly difficult to believe that this is not deliberate because it happens all the time. Not everything has to be a mad conspiracy. It's roughly one billion times easier to believe that a bad automated flagging system has triggered and marked this particular link as spam, than it is to believe that someone at Facebook is twirling their moustache, stroking their long-haired white cat, and hatching a plot to thwart the dastardly freedom-fighters of the open-source movement. Facebook's automated moderation systems are famously shit.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  > Facebook's automated moderation systems are famously shit. Unlike Tumblr's NSFW filter, which is always correct /s Read: ALL automated systems are bad, the whole AI thing is a joke, and will still be for a long time.
danschumann 5y ago
With so many large "crime waves", these small ripples which seem like crimes... Are they? Is MZ(read: Mark Zuckerberg) next to AC(read: Al Capone)? Does he still, in his heart of hearts, refer to his users as "stupid *f's"(as he referred to them in 2000's for "trusting" him. Nothing changed to make his users any smarter, so getting caught openly admitting how he feels did not change his opinion on his users, merely changed who he talks openly with, and the medium.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Does anyone here not consider Facebook users “stupid f*’s” for trusting him?
  - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    You could say this about any other network people take part in. The majority is always stupid from the point of view of someone above average intelligence. Does that justify exploiting them though? Are people fair game to be ripped off because they're naive or too busy with other stuff to be able to care? I can trick a child into handing over their proverbial candy too but that doesn't make it mine to keep.
dorianmariefr 5y ago
https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu
dusted 5y ago
Update: I'm now able to post the link, I'm totally sure it has NOTHING AT ALL to do with this making HN frontpage, just a funny coincidence.
- ffhhj 5y ago
  Something similar happened to me after criticizing Youtube's playlist drag speed on an HN comment, then they fixed that. Happy coincidences, right?

316 points by dusted 5y ago

jdrc 5y ago

do they also block it in messenger? afaik they block any url pattern that people tend to share often

learndeeply 5y ago

Why would facebook block an open source initiative, considering that they've contributed a ton of open source software (react, graphql, pytorch, etc)? The more simple explanation is that an automated detector misclassified the link because it shares patterns with spam links.

arboles 5y ago
- hobofan 5y ago
  Could you please explain why you think this is being naive? Same as GP, I don't see what interest Facebook would have in blocking this initiative. The impact the initiative would have would have very little impact on Facebook's business. Their moat is their userbase and no amount of good "public code" would change that.
pmlnr 5y ago
open source software from bigco it's only a smoke and mirrors to make it look like they are nice. https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/ and the current legislation trends in the EU are not fun, because they are not able to drive the narrative.
- lolinder 5y ago
  First, whether you like React or not, it's hard to argue that the most popular JavaScript framework is "just smoke and mirrors". It might be great PR, but there's also a lot of substance to it. Second, even if publiccode.eu doesn't help Facebook in any way, that's not evidence that they have motive to intentionally block it. You'd have to demonstrate that they have some reason to want the initiative to fail, not just claim they don't care.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    Does metabook create government related software? I can understand such behaviour from Microsoft, not sure what the motivation would be for FB
    - emilz0r 5y ago
      Workplace from Meta is not targeted specifically for governments, but are used by government orgs I've worked at.
- e-clinton 5y ago
  “open source software from bigco it's only a smoke and mirrors to make it look like they are nice.” So the React ecosystem is smoke and mirrors? GraphQL?
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I mean... yes. This is the case with Microsoft, Apple, Google and pretty much anyone else on the Fortune 500 that owns a software stack. I still find it hard to believe Facebook would go out of their way to intentionally flag random political articles for seemingly minimal gain.
Vinnl 5y ago
Another alternative explanation that wouldn't require Facebook's malice, assuming that this initiative does have its opponents, is that Facebook's some reporting tools were weaponised, i.e. lots of false reports caused the automated detector to misclassify it. (I don't actually expect it to have such staunch opponents, though, so the misclassification is probably due to other reasons.)

JimmyAxod 5y ago

.eu isn’t the most legitimate looking domain. They probably just have some rules around which domains tend to be spam/scam/bs

fermigier 5y ago
".eu isn’t the most legitimate looking domain." -> Is this based on actual and specific information ?
- labster 5y ago
  Brexit means Brexit.
- dncornholio 5y ago
  A few years ago I changed the domain of a customers website from .eu to .nl because it refused to show up in Google. Anecdotal evidence suggests .eu is not a good domain name for your business.
atoav 5y ago
Let me guess: You are not from the EU? .eu domains are not uncommon over here.
Beltalowda 5y ago
.eu domains are somewhat common; from a quick grep of my Firefox history: adamj.eu alsd.eu alternatives.eu belleslettres.eu bergfreunde.eu berthub.eu bitsnbites.eu bizin.eu btcdirect.eu carlschwan.eu ceridap.eu coolblue.eu cpcwiki.eu cubilis.eu datadoghq.eu doshaven.eu epicompany.eu eui.eu eupl.eu euplf.eu eurescrossborder.eu europa.eu forum.eu framelabs.eu gdprhub.eu geizhals.eu gmic.eu hownormalami.eu ibabs.eu inflation.eu itgovernance.eu johnmathews.eu juliareda.eu list.eu maxlath.eu noyb.eu politico.eu postgresql.eu publiccode.eu qonto.eu sagefund.eu secondwheels.eu sifted.eu skikk.eu successfactors.eu surnamemap.eu tjinstoko.eu xahteiwi.eu z80cpu.eu Some of these are fairly small/obscure; some are fairly significant: europe.eu is the site for a lot of what the EU does; politico.eu is a well known media organisation; coolblue.eu is major Dutch retail business, etc.
5y ago

forgotmypw17 5y ago

Facebook is fighting against the "huge target on its back" effect. The bigger of an audience you are, the more interest there is in posting abusive content, whether it's spam, trolling, or something else. The result is usually that you end up digging a bigger and bigger moat around your submission and curation process, so that your service is not completely flooded with crap. I think this is what you are seeing here, rather than censorship of this specific link or cause. I once posted a URL to a forum site I was developing for a community to Facebook, and somehow it set off the spam detector. For the next several months, I would get regular notices that a comment I left on another group's discussion was marked as spam, and was not visible to anyone else. I was posting regular comments, without links, apolitical, not critical of anyone, just adding to the discussion. The notices have since stopped, but I still rarely get any response to my comments, and anything I post to my profile's feed usually gets "ignored" completely, while in the past I'd get a pretty stable number of likes from friends (in the low double digits or high single digits.) As someone who has moderated a decent size sub-reddit in the past, I understand that there's no malicious intent on Facebook's part in this. They are just so much bigger than this one individual that they simply cannot see me, the same way I cannot see a bacteria, and may not notice a tiny gnat.

pjc50 5y ago
Indeed. It's possible that there's someone maliciously flagging your link as spam, but to a great extent Facebook and Twitter etc do not think deeply beyond "does this look like spam / is this getting reported as spam a lot". Try setting up a publiccode Facebook page and see if that gets flagged.
madsbuch 5y ago
They should hire more people to do things they have not successfully automated! Oh, maybe that would carve too much into the profit margin? Luckily we do have governance that can make companies comply with doing ethical business -- even though they don't hit bulls eyes every time.
- IntrepidWorm 5y ago
  Legally, the government can force compliance by large technical companies. In practice, there's no current chance of that happening. Believing that Facebook, Google, Twitter et. al. are beholden to the government given the past several years is somewhat laughable. Government is slow, and tech business is fast. Our politicians cannot keep up, even when they try.

mdoms 5y ago

What link? Can you provide a little background for those of us who have no idea what you're talking about?

em-bee 5y ago
https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/
- fsflover 5y ago
  And discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31183882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31183882.
- w-m 5y ago
  Trying to sign this, I got a 429 "too many requests" when clicking on confirm, and something about 20 per 1 hour. Did I sign, or didn't I? Reloading the page tells me there's no pending confirmation ID.

tremon 5y ago

Why would it not be spam? If many accounts are sending that link to their contacts, doesn't that exactly mimic bot-spam?

madsbuch 5y ago
Absolutely not. Proposing that just because something mimics something then it equates it is so absurd.
seb1204 5y ago
I thought this is what trending means.

ajrbyers 5y ago

I was able to post it recently on FB, from the UK.

lakomen 5y ago

Something I wrote in the last 2 weeks on fb was autoflagged as spam. As a result I set my account to be deleted. I thought I was shadow banned. When I reactivated it yesterday I received the post marked as spam, object or confirm wizard. Idk if that's new. But it does feel like they're training a new AI and crowdsourcing that process. But then again they might genuinely suppress this initiative, idk.

Proven 5y ago

bennyp101 5y ago

When you say 'blocked as spam' - I Just pasted it into a new post, and it worked just fine? Or do you mean other people can't see it?

matthewmacleod 5y ago

On the contrary, it's not even slightly difficult to believe that this is not deliberate because it happens all the time. Not everything has to be a mad conspiracy. It's roughly one billion times easier to believe that a bad automated flagging system has triggered and marked this particular link as spam, than it is to believe that someone at Facebook is twirling their moustache, stroking their long-haired white cat, and hatching a plot to thwart the dastardly freedom-fighters of the open-source movement. Facebook's automated moderation systems are famously shit.

pmlnr 5y ago
> Facebook's automated moderation systems are famously shit. Unlike Tumblr's NSFW filter, which is always correct /s Read: ALL automated systems are bad, the whole AI thing is a joke, and will still be for a long time.

danschumann 5y ago

With so many large "crime waves", these small ripples which seem like crimes... Are they? Is MZ(read: Mark Zuckerberg) next to AC(read: Al Capone)? Does he still, in his heart of hearts, refer to his users as "stupid *f's"(as he referred to them in 2000's for "trusting" him. Nothing changed to make his users any smarter, so getting caught openly admitting how he feels did not change his opinion on his users, merely changed who he talks openly with, and the medium.

Aeolun 5y ago
Does anyone here not consider Facebook users “stupid f*’s” for trusting him?
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  You could say this about any other network people take part in. The majority is always stupid from the point of view of someone above average intelligence. Does that justify exploiting them though? Are people fair game to be ripped off because they're naive or too busy with other stuff to be able to care? I can trick a child into handing over their proverbial candy too but that doesn't make it mine to keep.

dorianmariefr 5y ago

https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu

dusted 5y ago

Update: I'm now able to post the link, I'm totally sure it has NOTHING AT ALL to do with this making HN frontpage, just a funny coincidence.

ffhhj 5y ago
Something similar happened to me after criticizing Youtube's playlist drag speed on an HN comment, then they fixed that. Happy coincidences, right?