Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2019 December 22
| Computing desk | ||
|---|---|---|
| < December 21 | << Nov | December | Jan >> | Current desk > |
| Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives |
|---|
| The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
December 22
[edit]Wikipedia's Facebook page
[edit]Who runs this? There's a post today on the start of Hanukkah, and there's a fair amount of neo-Nazis who reacted to it. I would like for whoever runs the show to block those users on Facebook. Just check the angry-face responses; there's even a Nazi couple in there (with three accounts), in holy white matrimony. Facebook makes it extraordinarily difficult to report problematic accounts (you can't just click a button that says "user does nothing but glorify Nazi Germany"), so action has to be taken by users--in this case the user called "Wikipedia". Drmies (talk) 21:32, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
- Are we talking about [ https://www.facebook.com/wikipedia/ ]?
- And the comments at [ https://www.facebook.com/wikipedia/posts/10157634804273346 ]?
- I am not seeing anything from Nazis.
- Nonetheless, I want there to be an onwiki page with contact info for whoever at the WMF to {please tell me it isn't a volunteer) controls that facebook page and a talk page they monitor for suggestions/complaints. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:17, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
- Related questions:
- Does Facebook show different content to different people reading it?
- Is it possible to disable all public comments on that facebook page?
- Does "Wikipedia" have pages on twitter, Reddit, etc. so nobody can impersonate us?
- --Guy Macon (talk) 23:17, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
- The way "pages" work on Facebook is they need to be administered by individuals with user accounts. So one or more users is controlling the "Wikipedia" page. Their identities are masked and all their actions reflect the name of the page. You can contact them by pressing the "Send message" button to send a message through Facebook Messenger. You should be able to report posts by a control next to their text, but you cannot report reactions. Elizium23 (talk) 05:55, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
I think the OP is simply referring to all those people leaving angry faced emojis. Most just left them in reactions to the main post, but some have gone to the extent of leaving angry faced emojis to anyone giving well wishes. Someone in charge of the page is clearly watching that post, there has been a response to an earlier error so I suspect anyone actually posting clear-cut anti-semitic trolling would have their responses removed. Frankly if I saw such reactions I would have reported them to Facebook anyway.
About the angry face emojis, I'm sure that they were all or nearly all left by anti-semites. Unfortunately I also doubt those reactions are enough to warrant action by Facebook. The fact that on their profile, one of them explicitly calls themselves a "A Holocaust denier" (one of those who felt the need to react to well wishes with angry-faced emojis) another says they are a volunteer for "Waffen SS, Wehrmach", is probably not enough either [1].
Which IMO is an important point. If you have a Facebook account, personally, I don't find it that hard to report either of these editors, or others who have reacted, to Facebook. I haven't bothered to do so, not because of the difficulty doing so, but because I see little chance Facebook will take any action because of their current policies. To be clear, I'm not saying I agree with these policies, simply that they are their policies.
I would note that since most people only allow their friends to see most of that they do, it's also unlikely that any one of us knows what else these people do on Facebook besides their anti-Semitic stuff. Also AFAIK, Facebook doesn't really give a damn whether it's page owner reporting, or if it's just some random person. They only really care whether it violates their policies. (I have heard those who make successful reports are prioritised and those who make a lot of unsuccessful reports are de-prioritised or even ignored, which is a different point.)
Facebook does provide tools for page owners to manage their pages in ways beyond Facebook's policies. So those in charge of this page could I believe ban those users from the page. [2] I think they may also be able to remove the emoticon reactions, but I'm not completely sure about that. Note that the Facebook user being banned from the page will prevent them interacting with it, but it won't affect their use of Facebook in general in any way. Nor stop them sharing and reacting to the content on their own personal Facebook for that matter.
As Elizium23 said, if you just want to talk to those in charge of the page, I would suggest either posting a response, or messaging them on Facebook. If you wanted to go via the WMF, you could do so, but I suspect it will take far longer to get a response. I would say this even if there was some known WMF contact for their Facebook team. As Elizium23 has mentioned, it seems to include 32 people from the US, 4 from Spain and 1 from India although not all of these may be active.
In any case, I have suggested they do so. Although please don't out me, even if the connection between my real name and this pseudonym is trivially discoverable anyway.
Nil Einne (talk) 04:56, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
- It occurred to me that maybe the reason Drmies has problems reporting etc is because they don't have a Facebook account, or don't want to use it for this. That's fine, but I think it would be helpful to be clearer if the problem is not so much that Facebook makes it difficult to report, since IMO from my POV it isn't if you have an account. The difficult is reporting when you don't have an account. Frankly I find it far easier to report on Facebook with an account than in plenty of other places. Heck it's easier to report problematic stuff on Facebook when you have an account than it is to do so on wikipedia, whether or not you have an account. I can of course often remove problematic content by myself on Wikipedia, especially since I have an ECP account. Nil Einne (talk) 05:00, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
@Guy Macon: If you choose 'all comments' on the post, this has minimal filtering. (I think some stuff may still end up filtered on occasion e.g. accounts banned from Facebook or those temporarily deactivated, as well of course where a block is involved and maybe country level differences as I'll discuss later.)
Although per above, I don't think this is the reason why you are confused about Drmies comment, yes Facebook does show different content to different people in a way. Most commonly Facebook will filter spam and other stuff it doesn't think are of interest. Generally the "most relevant" option is selected by default which does filter comments. It organises comments in response to the individual user assuming you're visiting with an account, for example your friends comments will generally be higher up. I'm fairly sure it also filters in response to the individual user. For example your friends comment may be hidden by default to others, but shown to you. I also can't preclude Facebook sometimes choosing to show you something else like 'newest' by default, and particularly 'top fans' which may have different filtering or 'all comments'.
Note that with any option, if you have an account, I'm fairly sure that any comments left by someone who blocked you, or if you blocked them, will not be shown. Since Facebook can be a bit of a dark art, it may even be possible they will hide comments when not logged in if you decide your up to no good. There is also a slight chance Facebook may hide comments if they feel they need to do so for legal reasons in a certain country. (I think this generally applies to page, or posts, but I can't rule out out happening for individual comments.)
Although individual accounts can be banned, I'm fairly sure it's not possible to ban all interactions. I'm also sure that even if it was possible, it would never happen anyway. This is Facebook after all, and interactions are seen by Facebook, and I'm sure the WMF as a key part of the purpose of that page. See [3] "How do I control what visitors can post on my Page?" It is possible to ban people from posting to the page itself, and this seems to have already been done.