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How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Thu Dec 02, 2021 12:27 pm
by Perry
After the omicron variant made the news, I posted data on insufficient vaccination deliveries to Botswana where it was 1st detected, and it seemed as though few people saw my post in their feed, or maybe it was boring to them. But then I also noticed that US media falsely says "South Africa" and even NPR is vague in saying "southern Africa." I also noticed that the UK's Guardian will cover peer-reviewed research that is not discussed in US media, such as questions about Pfizer's research methods discussed in the British Medical Journal. And ivermectin needs more research and some serious discussion in mainstream media as having unknown effectiveness instead of dismissing it or avoiding mention:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/
So I think there is censorship of covid information, but not always in the way that people on the right think there is. And yes, there's certainly false or misleading info out there.

Anyways, I did 5 experiments on Facebook to see if the Covid info/warning box/bubble shows up. The box only showed up in 2 out of 5 experiments. Here they are:

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Passed:
vaccine_hoarding.jpg

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Passed:
covid19.jpg

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Text post: (passed)

Remove x's to reveal secret message for people only, not computers:

Africa needs cxoxvxixd vxaxcxcxixnxexs. Otherwise there will be more vxaxrxixaxnxtxs.

Does the info/warning box show?...

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Failed after about 30 minutes or so:
cursive.jpg

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Failed after about 3 minutes:
handwriting.jpg

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Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Mon Dec 06, 2021 1:19 am
by Perry
This passed:

sky.jpg

Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:57 am
by Perry
I had to re-do that last experiment because "ivermectin" by itself does not trigger a warning bubble without context words like "covid." There's a little feathering this time which makes it harder for an algorithm to distinguish from natural changes in brightness. The lighter outline makes it easier for people to read at the expense of possibly being easier for A.I. to read. However, at 3 hours it still does not display a bubble.

sky2_1080.jpg


Edit: it failed. :( There was a warning when a friend tried to share it today. However, the palm oasis image that does not have light outlines seems to be solid.

Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:45 am
by Perry
4 experiments with a wrinkled towel. It really looks like shadows, line thickness changes, and/or serifs are what works. I would recommend all 3 plus a little feathering to reach a wider audience with a message of some kind, hopefully an accurate message or reasonable question. :)

Failed within 17 minutes, but the info bubble disappeared the next day:
towel_web.jpg


Failed within 33 minutes:
towel_desat1080.jpg


Failed between 61 and 66 minutes:
towel_solid1080.jpg


Edit: this last one also failed. It never displayed a bubble, but the share function had a warning today.
towel_shadow_web.jpg

Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:02 am
by Ellen
Love it Grandmaster Perry 8)

Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:44 pm
by Perry
:) Thanks Ellen. For most of this pandemic, I've been supportive of what people like Dr. Fauci say, but then things started to not make sense. For example, him saying we need to vaccinate more people in the U.S. including children to stop new variants, meanwhile there are 3 billion unvaccinated people in the world, many who can't because of patents, trade secrets, and restricted production of the vaccines.

Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2021 7:13 am
by phydeux
What's Facebook? :wink: I've never been signed up for it, nor ever been on it, so I consider myself one of the 'elite one-percent' of society. :D

Try substituting a 'zero' for the letter 'o', and a '1' for the letter ' i ' to see if that'll trick the software.

Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2021 9:25 pm
by Perry
Today's algorithms are surprisingly capable. I imagine Facebook can read leetspeak easily, but it is a bit puzzling that just using dashes prevents the info box from showing. I believe they don't want to reveal text-reading capabilities unless necessary.

This image is looking good at 3 hours. Besides the obvious, there's a little HSV noise and a lot of JPEG compression:

sky3_1080.jpg

Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2021 9:35 pm
by Perry
And the image was resized to 1080x1920 prior to uploading. That might not make much difference, but it does reduce the available information for the AI algorithm while leaving the minimum for human vision.

Re: How to Get Around Algorithm Censorship on Facebook

PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2021 10:33 pm
by Perry
Crossing my fingers on these 2...

rotated1080hq.jpg


rotated1080lq.jpg