Reputable sites swept up in FB’s latest coronavirus-minded spam cleanse [Updated]

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As of press time, there is a chance that if you share this very news article on Facebook, its headline will trigger an eventual takedown with a “spam” tag and no further explanation.

On Tuesday, social media users began sharing scattered reports with a confusing issue in common: links from reputable news outlets they’d shared—either publicly or in private, friends-only groups—were marked as violations of “community guidelines” and automatically taken down, and many—but not all—had “coronavirus” mentioned in either the headline or in the article’s body. Other hot topics in the automatic-takedown spree include recent Democratic Party primaries in the United States… and the recent YouTube viral sensation of penguins running free in a Chicago aquarium.

This seemed to affect posts going back as far as five days, and it includes content from established newspapers and sites such as Politico, The Atlantic, USA Today, Vice, Business Insider, Axios, and The Seattle Times. Also caught in the net are the more open-ended blogging platform Medium (which runs a series of staffed and edited sub-sites) and the crowdfunding site GoFundMe. As of press time, compiling a complete list of affected sites and topics is admittedly difficult, thanks to the anecdotal nature of how these takedown notices are being reported and circulated.