Facebook's Anti-Spam Filter Blocks Legitimate News Stories, Exec Says Issue Resolved

Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has been falsely flagging posts as spam that are from a number of legitimate news organizations such as the BBC, Axios, The Atlantic and USA Today. 

The issue seems to occur with posts that have too many external links, according to USA Today. It's not only occuring with posts related to the coronavirus, as was initially reported, the newspaper said.

Users are receiving a message that their post violates Facebook's community standards for spam. 

The BBC, Axios and The Atlantic have also complained of similar issues and have been accused of violating the company's community guidelines.

Benzinga is covering every angle of how the coronavirus affects the financial world. For daily updates, sign up for our coronavirus newsletter.

Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity, said in a tweet Tuesday that the issue stems from an automated system and said it has been resolved. 

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.

— Guy Rosen (@guyro) March 18, 2020

Facebook Price Action

Facebook shares were down 4.96% at $142.01 at the time of publication Wednesday. The stock has a 52-week range between $224.20 and $138.98.

Related Links:

Facebook Shares Plan To Ban Deepfakes

France 'Cannot Authorize' Facebook's Libra Project