© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
People took to social media to express their shock at the autocomplete search suggestions being peddled by Facebook. Some of the terms suggested reportedly included sexual and child abuse, as well as videos of the Florida school shooting.
Facebook appear to have eventually rectified the issue that was causing the unsavoury predictive search suggestions, and the company issued an apology. "We're very sorry this happened. As soon as we became aware of these offensive predictions we removed them."
"Facebook search predictions are representative of what people may be searching for on Facebook and are not necessarily reflective of actual content on the platform. We do not allow sexually explicit imagery, and we are committed to keeping such content off our site," the statement to RT.com read.
"We are looking into why these search predictions appeared, and going forward, we're working to improve the quality of search predictions."
Facebook is not the first company to fall foul of its own search algorithm. In 2016, Google removed the predictive suggestion "are Jews evil" on its search engine.
This 'social media' is being pushed by the media and its owners, the big corps, to be the way people socialize instead of genuine friendships. Several years ago I read MY FRESHMAN YEAR by a youthful looking professor who gathered info on campus about friendships. It was a devastating portrait of the US college students who actually have no long lasting friendships and are lost on campus.
It is an indictment of US economic policy of profit which is at the base of broken neighborhoods and continual relo of households.
This is no surprise as Facebook, Twitter, ad nausaem, were to plug that very hole which was knowingly created as a part of the economic plan to keep generational friendships, wealth, and coordinated marriage alliances at bay. Look deep enough and that is what you will find: an economic system that is systematically destroying anything that allows deep attachments.