(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will look into Facebook’s decision to block public comments by White House social media director Dan Scavino.
FILE PHOTO: White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino awaits the start of a joint news conference between U.S. President Donald Trump and Poland’s President Andrzej Duda in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., September 18, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Scavino posted a screen shot late on Monday of a message from Facebook saying he was temporarily blocked from making public comments because some of his comments had been reported as spam.
Facebook said the issue was an “unintended consequence” of the platform’s policy on spam, adding, it has been in touch with Scavino and has apologized to him.
Explaining the error, Facebook said it caps the amount of identical, repetitive activity coming from one account in a short period of time as to stop automated bots.
“These limits can have the unintended consequence of temporarily preventing real people like Dan Scavino from engaging in such activity, but lift in an hour or two, which is what happened in this case,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
“Dear Facebook—AMAZING. WHY ARE YOU STOPPING ME from replying to comments followers have left me – on my own Facebook Page!!?? People have the right to know. Why are you silencing me??? Please LMK!” Scavino said in his post earlier.
Trump pounced on the issue. “I will be looking into this!” Trump said in a Twitter post.
Facebook said the issue is “content-agnostic and is solely about addressing potentially scammy repetitive behavior.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump accused social media platforms Facebook, YouTube and Twitter of favoring his Democratic opponents over him and his fellow Republicans. Alphabet Inc’s Google owns YouTube.
Twitter declined to comment while Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(This story corrects typo in third paragraph)
Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Steve Orlofsky and Shailesh Kuber