A bug in social media giant Facebook’s anti-spam

system has been blocking links to news stories about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

There were growing complaints that articles

about school closings and other information related to the pandemic being

blocked by the company’s automated system.

Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity Guy

Rosen tweeted on Tuesday (March 17) that the company was working on a fix for

the problem.

Hours later, Rosen said on Twitter that Facebook

had restored all the incorrectly deleted posts, which also covered topics

beyond the coronavirus.

We’re on this – this is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce. We’re in the process of fixing and bringing all these posts back. More soon.— Guy Rosen (@guyro)

We’re on this – this is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce. We’re in the process of fixing and bringing all these posts back. More soon.— Guy Rosen (@guyro) March 17, 2020

In a statement, Rosen said the problems

were unrelated to any changes in Facebook’s content-moderator workforce. The

company reportedly sent its human moderators home this week because of the

coronavirus outbreak.