Facebook says a ‘bug in its anti-spam system’ blocked coronavirus news

Facebook says a bug in its anti-spam system was blocking the publication of links to news stories about the coronavirus.

Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, took to Twitter Tuesday evening claiming that the company had fixed the issue following widespread outrage.

‘We’ve restored all the posts that were incorrectly removed, which included posts on all topics – not just those related to COVID-19. This was an issue with an automated system that removes links to abusive websites, but incorrectly removed a lot of other posts too,’ Rosen wrote.

Facebook users has been complaining earlier Tuesday that their attempts to share information and articles about the virus was being blocked by the social media giant.

One user took to Twitter to share a screenshot which showed a failed attempt to post a Times of Israel article to his Facebook friends about the coronavirus.

Rather than successfully posting the link, the user was instead met with a message from Facebook which read: ‘This goes against our Community Standards on spam’.

‘Facebook decided that my posting of this Times of Israel article is spam. (It’s not spam.)’ the user angrily wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, another claimed that Facebook has blocked them from sharing an Associated Press article.

‘They busted [blocked] my @AP share, too. Several friends sharing resources and emergency info have also been marked as spam,’ the person wrote.

Elsewhere, an employee at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Centre stated: ‘It looks like an anti-spam rule at FB is going haywire. Facebook sent home content moderators yesterday, who generally can’t WFH (work from home) due to privacy commitments the company has made. We might be seeing the start of the ML going nuts with less human oversight’.

However, Rosen replied claiming the issue was unrelated to any staffing changes that Facebook was going through due to the coronavirus.

‘This is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce,’ he wrote.

The company reportedly sent its human moderators home this week.

A representative for Facebook did not immediately respond to questions on the status of Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom do not work directly for the company and are not always able to work from home.

Facebook has committed thousands of dollars to helping its staff of 45,000 employees manage expenses during the coronavirus pandemic that is spreading across the globe.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced full-time workers will be given their six-month bonuses, along with an additional $1,000 to help those working remotely who do not have access to their usual catered meals, gyms and other services provided by the firm.

Contracted workers are not eligible for these funds, but will continued to be paid as they are also barred from entering the office, The Information reported.

‘We recognize that many people are going to need more time away to care for children and their families,’ Zuckerberg wrote in a memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News.

As of Tuesday afternoon, there are more than 197,000 cases and over 7,000 deaths confirmed worldwide.

Facebook has mandated a work-from-home policy for a little over a week now at all its US offices.