Facebook ‘bug’ sends some users notification that legitimate news content they shared is spam

MILWAUKEE — On Tuesday night, March 17, the Facebook VP of Integrity took to Twitter, where hundreds of media outlets were sharing frustrations that their legitimate news content was being flagged as spam by the social media platform.

Guy Rosen, Facebook’s VP of Integrity, tweeted that the issue is a bug with their anti-spam system, and that the issue should be resolved soon and all posts would be restored.

As the world deals with the coronavirus pandemic and a daily flood of major, breaking stories, news of the wrongly-flagged articles was met with outrage.

Incredible. @Facebook said my post of this Dallas Morning News article highlighting that two people in their 20s and 30s are in critical care in Dallas County and that young people aren’t invincible went against their guidelines and was removed.https://t.co/HqoIdzzcSi

— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) March 17, 2020

Something really weird is happening on @Facebook. A bunch of coronavirus posts from good sources like Atlantic and Politico are being flagged as spam. Happening to me and others. I'm the moderator of a huge community group, vetting medical info 15 hours a day. FB, don't do this!

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) March 17, 2020

Facebook responded Tuesday saying they are working quickly to resolve the issue.