Issue 149 - March 2013 (1st Edition) - Page 10

Will Responding to a Question about Facebook Group Usage Cause Future Posts To Be Censored

Outline
Message circulating on Facebook warns Group owners not to respond if a question appears asking them to provide a reason why they use the Group because future posts will be censored according to the answer they provide.

Preliminary Analysis
The claims in the message so far remain unsubstantiated pending further research.

What I can say for a fact is that I did recently answer just such a question in one of the Facebook Groups I manage. Since then, I have not noticed any sign of the "electronic censoring" of topics mentioned in the message. In fact after seeing the above warning, myself and other Group members tested the theory by posting messages on a number of topics far removed from subject area specified in my answer. None of these messages were blocked or removed. No links in these messages were "cancelled".

It is difficult to see why Facebook would bother to go to the trouble of restricting Group posts to a specific topic. It seems much more likely that the Group usage question is simply an attempt to gather statistical information as to how Facebook Groups are primarily used.

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Last updated: February 17, 2013
First published: February 17, 2013
Article written by Brett M. Christensen
About Brett Christensen and Hoax-Slayer

Example

Important News for Groups

Facebook will now show you a small window where you will be asked "the reason that you use a group", offering several different answers. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND, because it will cause electronic censor every time a topic different from your answers provided is brought up. This will cause many links to be automatically cancelled by facebook and there is nothing we could do about that. ~PLEASE SHARE~

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