Some Facebook Users Find Commenting the Single Word “Coronavirus” Results in Auto-Censorship

A weird way of censoring.

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Some Facebook users are reporting that the social networking platform is deleting comments containing the word “coronavirus.” What is not clear as of this writing though is whether this censorship about the virus is true across the Facebook platform for all users or only for a select group of users in the comment section.

The new censorship scheme surprised many Facebook users who noticed something wrong about their comments on Facebook posts and got in touch to let us know about it. Though, on investigation, the problem seems more widespread.

One user reported that Facebook issues a warning that says comments containing the word “coronavirus” go against Facebook’s community standards on misinformation that could cause physical harm.

Facebook notification warning a comment reading coronavirus goes against Community Standards on misinformation.
Facebook warning stating a comment saying Coronavirus goes against Community Standards on misinformation.
Facebook alert warning that a user comment reading Coronavirus violates Community Standards on misinformation.
A Facebook warning blocking a single-word comment reading Coronavirus for violating misinformation community standards.

What some other users observe though is the fact that the comment appears to have disappeared only for other people. This means that the user who posted it can still see the comment – what is more commonly known as a shadowban.

Still, the question remains as to why Facebook would do implement censorship of just the word “coronavirus” – meaning that it’s likely part of some wider implementation of a crackdown on “misinformation” or the algorithm could just be making an error.

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