Facebook fixes bug that marked some posts as spam

Facebook on Saturday said it had fixed a technical bug that caused some users' posts to be incorrectly flagged as spam and removed from the platform.

The social media company apologised for the problem and said the affected posts had been restored.

"We have fixed a bug that caused some posts to be incorrectly marked as spam. We've restored the posts that were affected and are very sorry this happened," Facebook said in a tweet.

The issue drew attention after journalist and author Salena Zito said an article she had published in the New York Post was removed from her Facebook page and labelled as spam.

Zito's article, titled "Why Trump's supporters won't care about Cohen and Manafort", had also been flagged as violating Facebook's standards. She publicly questioned the platform about the removal.

Facebook subsequently told Zito that a technical bug was responsible and confirmed that her post had been restored.

Zito later acknowledged the explanation, saying Facebook had responded to her inquiry after about 14 hours and attributed the removal to a bug.

The incident came amid broader reports from users that posts were disappearing shortly after being published. The Independent reported that several people had complained that updates shared on their pages appeared to vanish soon after posting.

At the time, Facebook had not provided a separate explanation for those reports.

The episode highlighted the difficulties social media platforms can face when automated systems are used to detect spam and enforce content policies at enormous scale. With more than 2.2 billion users globally at the time, even a relatively small technical error could affect a significant number of posts and users.

Facebook's confirmation that the posts were restored indicated that the removals were not the result of a deliberate change in its content policy, but rather a technical problem with its spam-detection system.