Facebook ‘Bug’ Caused Site-Wide Block Of Coronavirus Articles

A bug in Facebook’s News Feed spam filter caused links to coronavirus articles from major websites to be blocked across the platform, according to Tech Crunch.

The issue blocked shares of some but not all coronavirus-related content, while some unrelated links are allowed through and others are not. Facebook has been trying to fight back against misinformation related to the outbreak, but may have gotten overzealous or experienced a technical error. –Tech Crunch

Stories from Medium, USA Today and Buzzfeed were among those blocked from being shared as posts or comments.

“We’re looking into this right now and working as quickly as possible to share information. [I] can confirm at this point that we’re looking into the matter, can’t confirm what might be happening just yet,” a Facebook spokesman told Tech Crunch.

We’re on this – this is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce. We’re in the process of fixing and bringing all these posts back. More soon.

— Guy Rosen (@guyro) March 17, 2020

As of Tuesday night the issue had been resolved.