Facebook flagged and removed emergency wildfire information as 'spam'

Facebook is reportedly taking down important safety information as wildfire season spreads across the western part of the country.

An investigation by The Washington Post found dozens of instances of the tech giant flagging and removing posts since June, in areas that saw a total of 20 active fires. Posts often contained links or screenshots from the fire safety app Watch Duty, for example, a nonprofit resource that provides live alerts of wildfire movements. Daily posts from federal and state agencies, such as Cal Fire, warning residents in fire-prone California towns were also removed — including those made on dedicated fire update pages.

Many of these takedowns affect small town community pages, vital resources for live updates and information sharing. According to the publication, volunteer responders, fire and sheriff departments, news stations, and disaster nonprofit workers have also been targeted with takedowns across multiple states.

Facebook’s automatic explanation for the removals implies the posts have been taken down not for spreading misinformation, but for violating community spam guidelines: “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way,” the reports told users. The Post found that most of the targeted takedown involved external links, even those to official, government sources. Another problem: None of the users were notified that their posts were removed.

Facebook has long been faced blowback for its role in spreading deceptive information and posts, and now works with third-party experts to combat political and public health misinformation, including spotlighting reputable sources. As the platform’s misinformation policy reads: “We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm…We focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information.” But its Community Guidelines, under which these posts are removed, are more broad. “We seek to prevent abusive tactics, such as spreading deceptive links to draw unsuspecting users in through misleading functionality or code, or impersonating a trusted domain,” the platform writes. “Online spam is a lucrative industry.”

Across the site, posts frequently slip through the platform’s moderation gates, or are unfairly taken down and then reinstated, but emergency and fire workers told the Post that the problem has escalated in recent months — and in this case it could threaten lives. Facebook spokesperson Erin McPike told the publication that the company is “investigating this issue and working quickly to address it.”