Facebook Confused About Blocking Content, and a Hack Besides


I love and hate facebook. I love the idea of keeping a database of your social network that is kept up to date by the actual people in the network. Great. But I hate having to use their mailing system.

I already have an email address, and I don't need another place to check my email, much less one that requires a web browser and doesn't let me locally archive my messages.

But even worse than that, lately Facebook has decided that I am a troublemaker. I tried sending out a group message with a link to our venue's front page:

The Rent Party

If you're looking for a place to go dancing in SF, then go there. It's great.

Anyways, I tried to send the message with the link, and they told me that they suspected the server in the link above had been infected with Windows Malware.

I doubt it.

Especially considering it's running Linux.

And especially considering the fact that it's all hand-written HTML and images, I'll eat my foot if there's any trouble content on there.

But the message went out anyways, so I ignored it.

Then I tried to send a message this week, and it wouldn't even send the message, claiming:

"You are trying to post content on facebook that has been marked as abusive. You may request to have this block lifted from Facebook by contacting us below."

And this time it wouldn't even send the message.

So I did some tests.

I tried sending a single message to a friend with *just* the link.

No go.

I tried sending a message with just a link to our facebook event (no tricky javascript or Facebook hacker scripts here).

No go.

Finally I tried sending a single message to my friend with simply a link to Facebook.com. Their own front page.

And sure enough: [img]

"You are trying to post content on facebook that has been marked as abusive...

I'm certainly feeling abused by Facebook, so that makes sense!

But there's more! This is a twofer. Not only a complaint, but a workaround.

If you are sending the message as a reply to a conversation (as opposed to a new message popup), then when you type the link, you'll get that automatic link info addition at the bottom of the message. Try to send, get the 'abusive content' error, and then delete the link from the message. The link info will still be attached to the bottom, and you can (probably) now send the message! Great job, guys!