Facebook has got into another 'accident', this time it’s a technical one. In an attempt to provide cover for the democrats, Facebook blocked the links for WikiLeaks, an organization that publishes secret information, news leaks from anonymous sources.
WikiLeaks created a political controversy over the weekend after they posted hacked emails showing Democratic Party officials discussing ways to undermine Bernie Sanders‘presidential run. However, WikiLeaks found that Facebook users were unable to post certain links referencing the scandal, after noticing the trend of screenshots of the error messages on Twitter.
Facebook has also accepted that the company blocked links to WikiLeaks’ DNC email dump on Twitter, the microblogging site.
.@Facebook is blocking #DNCLeak email links. Monday is the Democratic National Convention https://t.co/BtfXrp03I0
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 24, 2016
User SwiftOnSecurity prompted a response from Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, after posting "Facebook has an automated system for detecting spam/malicious links,that sometimes have false positives." His provoked actions were answered/replied immediately by the Stamos stating "it’s been fixed."
@SwiftOnSecurity@wikileaks It's been fixed.
— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) July 24, 2016
Though Facebook is yet to mention the reason for this accident, there's a chance that its algorithm incorrectly identified the links as malicious. Yet, we have to consider, that WikiLeaks is a known entity and not any pirate site.
Earlier, Facebook was discovered to have removed a Live video of Philando Castille dying, and posts of the Bastille Day were removed from the newswire. However, if Facebook wants us to turn to it for news and treat it seriously, then it has to be much more open and not biased in any terms.