Recently I learned about porn and other strange images being displayed on people’s news feeds. This has not occurred to me, but I believe it be true, from certain testimony of an eyewitness who saw it on their Facebook feed. At first I believed this could be an error in Facebook’s programming or maybe they did merge with some pornographic site. Or this could related to the controversial message supposedly sent out by Anonymous, which some call a “hacking collective” that claims to fight to internet freedom and for greater rights for the people as a whole.
Business Insider had a related theory to this possible connection to Anonymous as evidenced in their article by Matt Lynley (important parts bolded):
If graphic images of gore, hardcore pornography and animal abuse are showing up in your Facebook news feed, you aren’t alone. Facebook users that clicked on a malicious link in their Facebook news feeds opened up an exploit that is flooding their feeds with nasty images from the darkest corners of the Internet, according to a report by ZDNet. A linkspam virus with the usual bait – Kim Kardashian, etc. - is luring users into clicking media-rich links, now more available thanks to Facebook’s recent timeline upgrades. Once clicked, their feeds become vectors for images containing hardcore sex, extreme violence, gore and death. Facebook responded to the reports and said it is opening an investigation. ZDNet suggests Anonymous, an online hacktivist group, might be the culprit after it [supposedly] said it planned to take down Facebook on November 5.
Also, I recommend you do what the end of the article asks: We haven’t seen any porn or graphic images on our Facebook news feeds yet. But if you have, send us some screenshots at mlynley@businessinsider.com
I continued on by looking at posts on ice rocket and found a number of articles on the subject.
All Facebook inquired into this matter in an article titled “Facebook Quietly Takes Down Pornographic Posts” by Jackie Cohen published yesterday [bolded parts that are important]:
By now you’ve probably seen at least one post or news about a rash of pornographic images that flooded Facebook’s news feeds, along with some violent photos as well. But how did content expressly prohibited by the site proliferate on the social network? We asked Facebook to comment on the phenomenon, and soon after noticed that the site quietly pulled these images and the threads. A spokesperson had thanked me for “flagging” these images (Is that what I did?). I had inquired about whether the posts had exhibited any signs of homophobia or other patterns, and told the Facebook spokesperson that these concerns had kept me from writing about the photos as quickly as I otherwise would have. Most likely some form of spamware tagged the images so that they appear on people’s profiles featuring the gender(s) that the recipient is interested in. The fact that these photos spread for as long as 48 hours unchecked how much Facebook relies on individual users to flag inappropriate content: people were commenting on the images more than flagging them. Perhaps tellingly, a page called “Stop Facebook From Becoming A Porn Site” garnered only 64 likes by the time of this posting. The pornographic images have been usurped by posts that link to articles concerning the photos, and comments on these links are keeping the topic alive: How is it that the photos made it up on the site in the first place? This isn’t the first time that pornographic images have become spam on the site, but more than a year has passed since the last time we saw anything like it; and this time around the photos are much more explicit than the ones going up in August, 2010. Clearly, Facebook’s photo recognition software doesn’t yet include any mechanism for recognizing pornography, but we suspect that such capabilities are now on the to-do list for engineers at the social network. This latest incident may also motivate the social network to create educational posts about what type of content is allowed, why certain material is prohibited and how users can flag inappropriate items.
There are a number of other sites that talk about the subject as well, including:
http://techie-buzz.com/social-networking/facebook-hacked-porn-content-facebook-timeline.html
http://nairabrains.com/2011/11/facebook-overtaken-by-porn-and-violent-images/
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/11/15/facebook-porn-flood-attack_n_1094274.html (Owned by so-called “Liberal” Arianna Huffington)
http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/11/15/porn-and-violent-images-infest-facebook-have-you-been-affected/
http://lifeissavage.com/facebook-being-flooded-by-porn-spam-pic/
http://business.avn.com/articles/technology/Someone-Anonymous-is-Putting-Porn-Violence-on-Facebook-454692.html
http://gawker.com/5859480/facebook-is-drowning-in-a-flood-of-hardcore-porn (those that were hacked in the past for their activities)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/15/us-facebook-images-idUSTRE7AE25O20111115
I didn’t want to reprint all of these articles, but I just wanted to create a better understanding of the issue at hand. I ask you what All Facebook’s article said at the end: What’s your reaction to this latest rash of pornographic and violent images that have gone up on the site? I look forward to your responses, which I will reprint in a second blog as I investigate more into this matter.
Facebook must get more serious about its privacy. This has been a major concern of Anonymous and Facebook users (like myself) that express outrage when the conditions are changed all the time. Luckily company is getting close to a deal with the Federal Trade Commission, something that has been pushed by certain lawmakers for a long time. ComputerWorld writes: “Facebook is close to reaching a deal with the Federal Trade Commission over charges that the social network engaged in “deceptive behavior” when changing its privacy settings, according to a report Thursday in the Wall Street Journal. In seemingly unrelated to subject to this matter, U.S. President Barack Obama told the American people in 2009: “Look, I’m at the start of my administration. One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable.” In conclusion, Facebook users must extend this ideal to hold Facebook accountable for its negligence and other actions to violate the guarantee of a right to privacy through any peaceful and concentrated actions necessary.
