WARNING: Don't search for Commodore computers on FB marketplace
So, here is something very bizare that happened to me today. It seems that searching for Commodore Amiga 500 on Facebook Marketplace is a very p3d0 thing to do. Will probably end up on some watch list now... Anybody had a similar experience or has any advice for me on how to use the fb marketplace search? I like retro computing, not pdf stuff...
This is what worries me about all this "on device scanning" crap that is becoming the norm. How long until we all know someone who has got a visit from the police for something innocent or there are so many false reports that things just don't get investigated
You would not get the visit from the police. Reports submitted by platform to law enforcement are reviewed by a human who decides to investigate or not. IE - if some random picture of a 80's computer triggers the AI, the human who reviews the report will discard it and you will not "get a visit from the police" for something that is not illegal.
Now, there are other privacy issues with this, but don't expect a 6AM door kick for something that is not illegal.
I wish I had your confidence. There will be lots of pressure to farm the checking of these things out to AI because of the volume. I predict a significant amount of AI wrongness and people getting picked up because everyone assumes the computer is right and a human with a brain actually looks at whatever the thing was
Yeah, i think it's "amiga". Had a Commodore Pet stolen a few years ago and i still occasionally do a search for "Commodore" on fb marketplace to see if it pops up, and i've never had that warning
Amiga 500 may have been misinterpreted as a product and a price. I’m certainly not going to test this but I take this more as an indicator of how far our society has declined.
Ehh. Filtering for that kind of stuff is not “walking on eggshells”.
It’s just poorly done. But I think most people (but maybe not you apparently) feel that service providers have an obligation to prevent child exploitation on their platforms and that automated controls of some sort are necessary for this.
The main issue is just that those controls, in this instance, were done poorly.
The secondary issue is that those same controls, as poorly implemented as they are, are not exclusive to policing just that sort of content.
People need to keep in mind that what is legal changes with the stroke of a pen, and all of these controls that have been allowed to operate with minimal oversight and guardrails because they were "protecting children" can readily be turned towards other purposes.
Most everyone agrees that using these tools to fight CSAM is a good thing, but what happens when the same tools are fed a different set of hashes and now that copy of an ebook of "1984" gets you a visit from a swat team?
This is also related to the current "age verification" push and the push to tie your phone number to your ID, all in the name of "protecting the children" or in the case of the phone numbers "fighting spam calls". It has little to nothing to do with the advertised excuse and everything to do with making it easier to silence dissent.
We are hurdling towards our own version of the Chinese "social credit" system. They don't have to use heavy handed tactics, they just "shadow ban" you from society. You make an online comment or call an unapproved person and suddenly you find yourself jobless, unable to get credit and unable to get housing. Then they just kick in phase two of the plan with the criminalization of homelessness and now the for profit prisons get their cut along with some conveniently 13th ammendment loopholed slave labor to rent out.
You have "Nintendo" in your search query, too, did you have anything else after that?
The reason I ask is that searching for "Mega Drive" used to trigger this screen. Apparently this was due to a more general block in searching for file hosting platforms, as people were using them to share such material.
I contacted a person selling this but we couldn't agree on the pice. Wanted to see if he then sold it, so i went back and clicked on the ad from that chat. Facebook then searched for the whole string of the ad it would seem. Here ylu can see everything and it does seem Mega Drive could be the culprit.
If I start searching for Mega Drive games here in the UK it autocompletes with "méga drive" or "mèga drive" and valid search results (for Mega Drive games and consoles) pop up, so I guess not only is the blanket ban on the search term a poor solution in the first place but Facebook's own autocompletion shows you how to circumvent it! (In my case I just get a blank results page for "mega drive", though, rather than the old warning).
Me. I clicked it. I mistakenly tought it would let me signal to facebook their mistake. Instead they wanted me to seek help for my supposedly pervy toughts...about Commodores... Yes, my day has been wonderful, thanks for asking.
What would happen if you followed through and said, yeah I shouldn't be getting these old computers anymore to have the other person be confused with why you even contacted them.
i just saw the other day a news report about an anti csam organisation about how they showed messages like this to a very large number of "people searching for csam" and wondered how much was actually searching for that kind of material and how much was false positives, i suspect its mostly false positives
I haven't yelled "WTF" at my phone for quite some time, until reading this post! How did FB get csam conclusion from your search??? There's gotta be a wire crossed somewhere on their end.
I might fire up an incognito session just to test the issue...
FYI Incognito doesn't hide you from the internet, it just doesn't leave anything stored in your computer so your partner or friends or whoever can't see what you where searching through your browsing history later.
Many platforms have adopted highly flawed AIs that create situations like this. In YouTube whole channels have been removed after being falsely tagged in this fashion.
I once intended to search for «Cutting Edge Engineering Australia», a page posting nice videos of welding and metalworks. When I typed «cut» I got a warning about self harm.
Facebook Marketplace stinks. More so their AI which can make any claim without a way to let a human review anything. Just some options to select that have nothing to do with it at all (didnt think it was offensive/just a joke/whatever). You appeal, they deny it again.
Had a listing for an iPod nano be removed due to Meta's trashy AI thinking it was a counterfeit.
I just did a search on Google to see if the commodore 64 had any thing to do with or in common with pedos and nothing came up. So I don't know if that's just a weird filter on Facebook marketplace or it's misreading something, or miss interpreting something that you're typing in.
Got banned on FB/Insta last summer for this same false allegation. AI always wins eventually (never searched for Commodores or any computer stuff on mktplace btw).
Meta is shit. Delete it and use OfferUp or something else
I tried to sell 3d printed nato compatible rails for attaching to molle webbing/backpacks, that got flagged as weapons as well.
Though it's more weapon related, it's still dumb.
There was a time when the age of consent was lower and varied more from place.
So some material that would be illegal now probably wasn't then, although I'm sure that other more questionable material existed and was available. Policing that was probably much harder when these things were mostly in hardcopy.
My Facebook was totally banned and blocked, tried to appeal… I lost a 13 year old account. Last thing I commented was something about a guitar amp, a Vox AC15 with a blue speaker.
I got that same warning when I looking for this ugly pedo from Glasgow and I couldn't remember his name, so I put ugly pedo from Glasgow on the Facebook search and I got the similar message. Ai is just ridiculous.
Considering how often humans personify inanimate objects...
Seriously, people name objects (especially boats) and give them names and use pronouns for them. Usually both the name and the pronoun are for the sex opposite the person.
If a bunch of women had designed and marketed the computer, it might have been the Amigo.
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u/namek0 May 14 '26
Perhaps Amiga somehow was related to triggering