Is the algorithm method stopping my messages from multiplying?

facebook

What is going wrong with the social media giant Facebook?

By now, we all know that Facebook took it upon itself to target and attack bloggers – primarily with WordPress, as I understand it – who use the site to publicise their articles, last week. Vox Political was one of those sites.

The censorship took the form of an alert message that appeared on readers’ screens when they clicked through from Facebook to an article by the writers who had been targeted. This message stated: “Facebook thinks this site may be unsafe. If you’re not familiar with it, please provide feedback by marking it as spam (you’ll be brought back to Facebook).”

Anyone trying to ‘share’ a link with other Facebook users was subjected to the infamous and annoying ‘Captcha’ box – this is the time-consuming and difficult method of proving you are a human being by reading a series of letters or numbers, that have been stretched or bent on the screen in a way that we are told prevents automated ‘spam’ systems from understanding it, and then typing the sequence correctly into a box. This is off-putting as it takes time and effort, and many users may have decided not to bother.

All this took place around the time the House of Lords was voting on the regulations that will allow private firms to compete to run NHS services – the privatisation of the NHS; and it also coincided with bowel cancer sufferer Mark McGowan’s crawl from King’s College Hospital to 10 Downing Street, pushing a toy pig with his nose to highlight his view that the privatisation marked out the Conservative-led government as pigs with their snouts in the money trough.

I can’t comment on how this affected anybody else, but my own site certainly suffered as a result, and I complained to Facebook about this treatment, pointing out that the alert message clearly lowered me in the estimation of right-thinking members of the public generally, and caused me to be shunned and avoided – fulfilling not just one but two criteria necessary for an act to constitute defamation – otherwise known as libel.

The problem appeared to resolve itself just before the weekend. Facebook said that it was all a mistake, made by its automated spam-filter algorithms. It seems that WordPress sites all over the world were affected, and there was discussion of it on the WordPress user forums, ending with a post from a staff member saying that “the problem seems to have been fixed on Facebook‘s end on or around April 26th.”

And that should have been the end of it, right?

Well… were these automated systems malfunctioning again on Sunday and Monday? That would seem very strange behaviour, so soon after an initial ‘mistake’ that was so widely discovered, reported and discussed.

Still, I posted an article yesterday and, when I checked this morning, found that – according to Facebook statistics – it had reached a total of 16 people. The previous article, a link to a reblog that I also posted yesterday, had amassed more than 1,700 readers (according to the stats). The article before that – more than 2,000.

That was seriously odd, I thought. Nobody loses 2,000 readers in a day.

Still, I had another article to promote, so I posted the link to “Tory department of dirty deeds swings into pre-election action”. Half an hour later – by which time I would normally have expected to see a ‘total reach’ in the hundreds, that number had stalled on two.

That’s right – two.

“Yes,” said one of my readers in response to a (Facebook) status report asking what the devil was going on, “the government is putting pressure on Facebook to delete some posts and groups which contain political themes, and to slow the process of certain posts being sent for others to see.  Guess Cameron is feeling the heat.”

Conspiracy-theory nonsense? Or a rational response to the evidence? I thought about this for a while. Then I decided to put it to the test.

If Facebook is using spam-filtering algorithms to censor certain messages, then it must be programmed to detect particular words, or combinations of words, I reasoned. Maybe my use of “Tory” alongside “dirty deeds” was what got the article kicked into touch?

So what would happen if I posted a link to the very same article, but this time with an innocuous – if unlikely – headline such as “Peace and harmony breaks out between the British political parties”?

I’ll tell you what happened: ‘Total reach’ of 542 people within half an hour – that’s what! More than the original link – to the same article – had achieved all day. More than it has achieved as I type this, in fact.

Maybe I’m being paranoid – Johnny Void thinks so; he’s been trying to convince me that this really was an innocent glitch, and I’d like to believe him.

But I also want some solid answers. Wouldn’t you?

I’ve written to Facebook; let’s see what happens.

And, while we’re waiting, I might create a new page on Facebook: BASTARDS for CONSERVATISM! The description will read: “We may be illegitimate, but we know our own when we see them!”

That ought to confuse this dodgy algorithm!

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11 Comments

  1. sparaszczukster April 30, 2013 at 5:30 am - Reply

    This is seriously worrying, Mike. Especially since Facebook seems to allow some pretty nasty non-political stuff to circulate without any attempt to censor it. I don’t use Facebook myself and don’t know how it works – I guess I’m an old fogey! – but my 15 year old grandson does and yesterday he was telling me about a video he’d seen on there in which some guy enacted a sadistic beheading of a latex dummy dressed up as a woman complete with fake blood. So it seems they’ll let this kind of sick content circulate but clamp down on perfectly legitimate and healthy political discussion.
    Britain is getting to be a pretty nasty place to live.

  2. Tony Phillips April 30, 2013 at 7:55 am - Reply

    I’m pleased to say I don’t rely on Facebook to read your messages. Nothing would surprise me in the ‘dirty tricks’ department though.

  3. reecemjones April 30, 2013 at 8:54 am - Reply

    I’ve found its not just political sites. Ever since I was hit with the captua box on a site I post on, I’ve had to manually post things.

    Perhaps its Facebook trying to cut down on blogs that post too much or a spam algorithm that has identified wordpress post as spam?

  4. Princess Layla April 30, 2013 at 9:42 am - Reply

    I would tend to side with you on this, I’m not paranoid, I just have a healthy distrust of the system.

    Why not try a repeat of what you just did.

    Write your next article and publish it twice, one with a seemingly innocent link and one with a contentious link.

    Run them absolutely side by side simultaneously and see what happens to the stats of each.

  5. Alan Beresford April 30, 2013 at 9:48 am - Reply

    It’s censorship.American’s are having the same problem if they post thinking not conductive to the status quo.

  6. beetleypete April 30, 2013 at 10:02 am - Reply

    Facebook is big business. It doesn’t come much bigger, let’s face it. They will naturally attack anything that threatens to undermine their combination of Capitalist/American credo. That is why I have never had anything to do with it. I can only urge all your affected contacts to leave Facebook, and put up a message explaining why they are doing so.
    Trouble is, they might miss the ‘status’, ‘likes’ and free games, that all make this terrible organisation so addictive, and popular with ‘the masses’. Keep trying Mike. It will be worth it, one day. Regards, Pete.

  7. Niki April 30, 2013 at 10:31 am - Reply

    Pete, Facebook is more than that,it’s a link to the political stuff I wouldn’t find otherwise, and a link to friends that I don’t get to see anymore since I became ill. I hate my dependance on it and distrust it, but I’m not sure what my alternative is.

    • beetleypete April 30, 2013 at 8:15 pm - Reply

      I don’t wish to sound facetious, and believe me, I don’t mean to. However, what happened to just writing letters, contact by ‘normal’ e mail, and good old phone calls? These days, we have Skype, Face Time on phones (certain models), and all sorts of communication options denied us during most of my lifetime. Or you could start a blog (really easy, I managed it) advertise your blog to your friends, and keep updated through that, no profit for the mighty FB. There are so many other options Niki, and the more we turn our backs on Facebook, the more we deny it influence. regards from Norfolk. Pete.

  8. RVB April 30, 2013 at 12:50 pm - Reply

    The link to this article apeared on my timeline, now it’s gone. Also the post to Facebook link at the bottom doesn’t work…coincidence, deliberate or am I mad?…I always thought my scepticism was healthy rather than paranoid!

  9. Bryan Hemming April 30, 2013 at 3:38 pm - Reply

    Never did trust Facebook, and still don’t. Give me ten readers that actually read my stuff rather than ten thousand who just pretend they have, because it just might make them appear interesting. Not that my stuff makes anyone appear interesting. Even me. Especially me. And now you. If you’ve read this.

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