Facebook blocked the phrase “everyone will know” for more than a day before again allowing everyone to post those three words. Melanie Ensign of Facebook Security Communications told the Huffington Post that it was because of a mistake with the platform’s spam filter, and the engineers at the company have resolved the issue.
Was it a mistake?
Ensign explained that the social network is constantly updating the rules for its spam-fighting engine, and that particular phrase got erroneously caught in the mix. Ensign didn’t know exactly for what duration the phrase was banned.
On Friday, someone posted a question on Question.com asking, “Why can’t you post ‘everyone will know’ on Facebook?” to which another user replied that he too was unable to post the phrase as a status on Facebook. Soon, a Reddit thread was filled with Facebook users claiming they were unable to post the phrase as a status or in a comment.
It appears that the error message was either a bug or a temporary ban designed to track and monitor spam errors. Even on chat IM, the phrase “everyone will know” had the same results. It is speculated that Facebook has a nomenclature which is banned from use on the platform. It suggests that the social network has a master record of banned words and phrases.
Is Facebook evading taxes?
But while it appears that Facebook mistakenly blocked the phrase “everyone will know,” some suggest that the social network intentionally did something else wrong. The world’s biggest social platform paid just £4,327 ($6,643) in corporation tax in 2014, according to the company’s latest U.S. results.
Facebook’s latest Companies House filing shows that it had a pre-ax loss of £28.5 million last year but paid £35.4 million in share bonuses to its 362 U.K. staff or £96,000 per employee. This shows that the U.S. firm’s corporate tax was less than the average salary of a U.K. employee. For a U.K. employee, the average salary is £26,500, on which they pay £5,392.80 in income tax and national insurance contributions, says a report from the BBC.
Despite the bugs and occasional glitches, the fact remains that Facebook is the most popular social media platform on the planet with 1.39 billion active users each month, an increase of 13% from last year.
