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November 7, 2007

Facebook Censors Ron Paul?

Michael Arrington

106 comments »

The theme of my email inbox this morning (it’s morning for me, anyway) is that for some reason a search for presidential candidate “Ron Paul” in Facebook Groups yields zero results. The reason isn’t because there aren’t any Ron Paul groups - a search for “Paul” shows hundreds. For some reason, the search is blocked.

Other candidate show up just fine. More than 500 groups show up for each of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and others.

But the wacky Ron Paul? Nada.

I’ve got calls into Facebook but everyone is still in New York after the big announcement yesterday and they don’t seem to be super responsive today.

Update: Was just sent this as well.

Update 2: Facebook says this is now fixed in the comments, and blames this on a bug, which is…highly unlikely.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Facebook Censors Ron Paul?  »TechAddress

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

  2. NewsCred Blog » Blog Archive » Ron Paul — Media Censorship or Conspiracy Theory?

    November 28th, 2007 at 9:03 am

Comments

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  1. Internet Marketing

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

    Digg has also been recently accused of automatically burying stories that mention “ron paul”.

  2. Andrew

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:34 pm

    Probably has to do with the fact that he just raised 4.2 million dollars in 24 hours off the internet on Monday, which is the record for any candidate online to date, and means he out raised Romney’s fundraising on the day he declared.

    But unlike Romney who had a lot of big money donations, the Ron Paul’s average donations was a hair over $100

  3. Don Wilson

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    Probably has to do with his supporters are psychos and destroy online communities by flooding the market with propaganda.

  4. Automatt

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    Another excellent post for FacebookCrunch

  5. Michael Arrington

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    I’m betting some employee just did this without talking to others.

  6. khefer

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    Don Wilson: -3.732/10

  7. Andrew

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    Don…thats the thing with online communities, if something is popular its going to be talked about.

  8. Andrew

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:41 pm

    @5 well Michael one of the founders of Facebook is actually working for the Obama campaign…so that could be it

  9. Aaronontheweb (AjaxNinja)

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    @1

    That’s because Ron Paul supporters spammed the living hell out of Digg for months with non-substantive Ron Paul stories.

  10. MikeW

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    Facebook will have some generic response to this, like: “our search engine is in the process of rebuilding its index - this is not a commentary on any one political candidate.”

  11. Chris

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    “I’m betting some employee just did this without talking to others.”

    Do you have any facts to back this up Mike?

    I always wondered why you don’t have fact checkers like larger media outlets when you reportedly make 240k per month?
    You guys can certainly afford not to speculate if you didn’t want to.

  12. Chris

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    I’m not picking at anything either. I’m just saying.

  13. Michael Arrington

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:47 pm

    Chris - shhh.

  14. Mr. Stanley Russell Dudek

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:49 pm

    Interesting…

    “Ron Paul joined Facebook. 12:43am”

    that’s from his Facebook politician page.

    What happened, I believe, is they reset his page on Facebook to skew his numbers.

    I’m serious.

  15. Chris

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    Hey, I love this blog. This blog is great. I just don’t want to see it descend into Scoblisms like trailing wild statements with question marks and putting up every other shoddy blog post.

  16. Joey Joe Joe Shabadoo

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    Maybe TechCrunch should keep its own house in order first - I don’t see any Ron Paul stories on TechCrunch…

  17. Soda Pop

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    Ron Paul might be the leading Republican if the media (now web) would refrain from outright censorship. This is why centralized ownership is a bad idea.

  18. Mark

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    Arrington, I see your chickenhawk repub beliefs are surfacing. First, you spotlight mitt romney, now you’re claiming the “liberals” at Facebook are censoring ron paul.

    You should be ashamed of yourself.

  19. Don Wilson

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    #11, TechCrunch posts = public, TechCrunch comments = commentary. Know the difference ;)

  20. Michael Arrington

    November 7th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

    Mark - wow, how did you figure that out? amazing. You have such a firm grasp of how the world really works.

  21. TheDuhMoment

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    Anyone notice the really bad photo of Hilary Clinton to the left of this article? Ouch.

  22. Revolutionist

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    Haven’t there been too many posts about Facebook lately, granted it is an extravagantly popular social network, but does everything on TechCrunch have to be some how associated with Facebook?

  23. Bobby

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    Oh brother.

  24. Boris

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    Mike,

    I think the posts have been spot on. This is an interesting development and I want to see what caused this… you have the connections to figure it out for us.

    Keep it up.

    To the people who won’t stop whining and especially Chris from beercosoftware:

    There are so many posts on TC daily - just skip the ones you don’t like people. And Chris, for the love of… Just stop advertising yourself in every comment.

  25. AdamLow

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:17 pm

    Michael, what is “wacky” about him?

  26. Mr. Stanley Russell Dudek

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    Direct link to Ron Paul’s Facebook Group Page:

    http://www.facebook.com/profil.....amp;ref=mf

    “Ron Paul” searches are still not right.

  27. christian faith

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:22 pm

    This country needs FBI, CIA, DOD, FEMA, and economic power. Which president looks real to you?

    Mike Huckabee
    Mitt Romney
    Ron Paul
    Fred Thompson
    Mike Gravel
    Joe Biden

    These people sound like web 2.0.

    ===================================
    Which is not….

    Rudy Giuliani
    Barack Obama
    John Edwards
    John McCain
    and the rest…

    They sound like web 1.0. They ran out of fuel…

  28. James Thomas

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:24 pm

    Quick, everybody bitch about techcrunch!

    All of you should just shut up and take the story for what it’s worth.

    Arrington, I highly doubt it’s some big conspiracy…

  29. Sean McGee

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    Wow. Mike, you’ve got a tough job. You report on a legitimate story about a tech company, and get blasted for being republican.

    And then, another person blasts you for calling someone “wacky”.

    That is whack.

    Some people don’t know quality content if it hit them square in the eye.

  30. Mark Rushmore

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    Right, not some big conspiracy, rather one of several diverse and smaller efforts to minimize any momentum Ron Paul might be picking up.

  31. Ezra

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    I work on our political features at Facebook.

    This is a technical glitch. Facebook would never censor an individual candidate as you suggest. Mr. Paul has a politician profile on Facebook, and all of his groups are still there. This is just a bug with our search.

    We are investigating the problem to see why this is happening.

  32. AdamLow

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

    I didn’t really “blast” him.

    I asked him a 5 word question.

  33. Ezra

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    For those who can’t wait to get your Ron Paul fix, visit his politician profile on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/person.php?id=2330333861.

    It is worth nothing that he has more “supporters” on Facebook than any other Republican presidential candidate.

    Again, this is a bug with our search, not some ridiculous conspiracy as the author suggests.

  34. Jay

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:43 pm

    Anyone who has ever programmed knows that it is not a “bug” when one specific search term yeilds 0 results. It doesn’t make any sense. There is code in there restricted a search for the string “ron paul”. I garuantee it.

    Ezra, a web developer blog is the wrong place to throw around words like “bug” for this sort of problem when anyone knows that that is unbelieveably unlikely.

  35. John

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    What is this “face book” thing I keep reading about, and how can I subscribe to their “newsletter”. Oh, I guess this IS their newsletter.

  36. Mike Cantelon

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:47 pm

    @Ezra:

    Why does this “bug” only affect one candidate? When is it going to be fixed?

    Given the right-wing beliefs of funders such as Peter Thiel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel ), FaceBook would do well to address this quickly.

  37. Mike

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:48 pm

    Thanks Ezra, keep up the awesome work over at FB :)

  38. John

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    @Ezra,

    For some people, your explanation will hold little weight. Once a company violates peoples trust, their word is no longer enough. (see story about facebook employee(s) accessing and altering peoples personal profiles)

  39. Jon

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:54 pm

    @AdamLow

    You did blast Michael in your 5-word reply because you added quotes around the word “wacky.”

    The quotes imply condescension on Michael even using that word. In addition, you effectively gave Michael the bird four times in tsunami-like force - the quotes being 4 tiny middle fingers.

  40. Max Merkel

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:56 pm

    @Jay
    i agree completely

    @ezra
    as a programmer i find this very very very very unlikely to be the result of a “technical glitch”. i’m inclined to say impossible.

  41. Kalim

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    @16 This IS a Techcrunch Ron Paul story, everyone isn’t out to get Ron Paul they just don’t understand how big his following is.

    Arrington, thanks for covering this; it does seem very anomalous and certainly begs for further inquiry and a response from facebook.

    You should also really consider having Ron Paul for an interview to talk about internet and technology policy, or maybe even Justine Lam, his eCampaign Director or Trevor Lyman the organizer of thisnovember5th.com to talk about online political organizing.

  42. Paul Revere

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    Ron Paul must be stopped at all costs! (otherwise real freedom might come to the American people). He’s a wacko! (for wanting a balanced budgets and an end to massive debt). He’s a revolutionary! (like our founding fathers). The founding father sucked! Long Live Tyranny! Down with Ron Paul!

    (the following has been a satire in case you’re too stupid from watching episodes of 24 to figure it out).

  43. disinter

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    Paul Revere - that was good!

  44. John

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:09 pm

    Ron Paul is not wacky - he’s the only sane one.

    Stop watching Fox News Michael.

  45. beava

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

    He is a little wacky…in a good way.

  46. yasam

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

    facebook issues hmmm………..

    http://lapnol.blogspot.com

  47. yasam

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    Tech Crunch is awsome and see the real tech stuff at

    http://lapnol.blogspot.com

  48. Ezra

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:22 pm

    the problem is with the word “ron”. it fell out of our search index for some reason. we’re trying to get it fixed now. (note that a search for ‘ron’ returns nothing: http://www.facebook.com/s.php?.....amp;init=r, but searching for ‘paul’ does work: http://www.facebook.com/s.php?.....amp;init=r).

    so this doesn’t just affect groups for Ron Paul, but rather any name with “ron” in it. for example, you can’t find any groups if you search for “ron jeremy” right now either, though such groups do exist (e.g., http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2210262753).

    again, we would never target an individual politician this way. we are delighted that Ron Paul has used Facebook as part of his campaign, and we welcome the efforts of his supporters to use Facebook to promote him.

  49. Eric Atkins

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    I would like to know the technical reason why this happened. Is there a security issue with Facebook?

  50. Max Merkel

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

    @48

    this might be the work of a malicious facebook employee. in fact this is the only possible explanation. (another would be that the whole company is involved, but i highly doubt that)

  51. Gabe Harris

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    Ezra,
    we can find the info, we know where to look. Your coincidental glitch only limits new recruits from learning about ron paul. It doesn’t sound like a glitch though, it sounds intentional.

  52. Ezra

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

    We’ve also fixed the problem:
    http://www.facebook.com/s.php?.....amp;init=r

  53. Zak

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

    Hopefully Mike you realize now that you can’t just make any “wacky” side remarks about some candidate without elaborating.

  54. Faramarz

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    Micheal. I’m from Toronto and the name search for Ron Paul works fine for me.

    http://farm3.static.flickr.com.....09_o_d.jpg

  55. Max Merkel

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

    @ezra

    what was the reason ? the technical reason ?

  56. FreedomJoyAdventure

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    From: http://www.facebook.com/topic......opic=15343

    “Paul Francis wrote
    41 minutes ago.
    Ezra

    November 7th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    I work on our political features at Facebook.

    This is a technical glitch. Facebook would never censor an individual candidate as you suggest. Mr. Paul has a politician profile on Facebook, and all of his groups are still there. This is just a bug with our search.

    We are investigating the problem to see why this is happening.”

  57. Ezra

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:42 pm

    the word “ron” fell out of our groups search index. so groups for anyone named “Ron” weren’t showing up in search. other terms seem to have fallen out of the index as well, but we’re still investigating which ones and why.

    again, Facebook would never target an individual politician as people have suggested. we are excited that Ron Paul has been using Facebook in his campaign, and we welcome the efforts of his supporters to use Facebook to promote him as well.

  58. Jon

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:45 pm

    Thanks for the update Ezra.

    Would be great to hear the details later so techs all over can learn and prevent similar things happening.

  59. Max Merkel

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    yep, thanks for the update.

    i’m eagerly awaiting the details, too ;)

  60. gilltots

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

    maybe facebook needs some developers that are…wait for it….better than ezra!

  61. duhmoment

    November 7th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

    Time to post a FB flyer ad targeted at Facebook employees….

    [Image of Ron Paul]

    Caption: Nice try there.

  62. Jason Ray

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:00 pm

    There seems to be a massive denial that Ron Paul is in fact a “Top Tier Candidate,” and the MSM is going into full bashing mode. CBS even recently called him a “Meaningless Fruitcake” with “No Chance of Winning.” It hardly matters at this point. The cat is out of the bag, and there’s no stopping him now!

  63. John Handelaar

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    Sure, because there’s no possible way this could be an example of the widely-seen search algo practice known as “indexing only words of four characters or more”.

  64. Ron Paul 2008

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    @45

    Wacky…just because he is not a former Trial Lawyer, US Attorney or Investment Banker, does not make him “wacky”

    Will someone please explain to me why the MSM insists on labeling him in every article. I would appreciate a response sometime before FaceBook is valued at $82 Trillion dollars…hurry, you only have a few more weeks.

    FYI…
    Rudy can’t keep a wife
    Mitt believes Joseph Smith’s story - Seriously
    McCain is a American Hero, but will run out of money
    Fred Thompson is a freakin actor

    No one says anything but praise for these guys…not even a hint of wackiness in this crew…COME ON

    Just check out http://www.ronpaul2008.com and look at what this guy stands for…if you think he is wacky…Iran has Open Enrollment for citizenship

  65. Renee

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    Facebook has a technical glitch that returns no results on Ron Paul?
    GoogleNews also has a glitch that does the same thing. You can search and return 9,000 results and search again and return 75. I wrote to ask them what gives, and they said they are trying to fix it. That was almost 3 weeks ago. They said it has to do with mass amounts of people searching the same thing at once.

  66. GS

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    Don your such an idiot, go fight in Iraq, and lets continue to devalue our “dollar” to mere cents.

    Your the dumb idiot.

  67. Steve Ballmer

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:30 pm

    Idiot for president, his theme:

    “A Troubled man For Troubled Times!”

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  68. Mr. Stanley Russell Dudek

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:32 pm

    It is not a technical glitch, it is a database reset or a profile delete and reset.

    His facebook Politicians Profile is linked directly here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=5531442718

    Everyone notices what’s happened, and they’re not happy.

  69. johns

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:40 pm

    Ron Paul 2008 says: “Just check out http://www.ronpaul2008.com and look at what this guy stands for…if you think he is wacky…Iran has Open Enrollment for citizenship”

    Yeah, right. That’s like reading a company press release and expecting to find honest and accurate information.

    You RP supporters need to remove the blinders when it comes to Ron Paul. I can understand inexperience children being impressed with RP as underdog internet phenom but intelligent adults look to the facts.

    And RP can’t hide from the facts of his voting record. Check it out here:
    http://www.vote-smart.org/voti.....d=BC031929

    Peruse his votes on abortion/contraceptives, for example.

    Also, take a read of some of the racist and other screwy statements made in past newsletters with RP’s name attached here:
    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archi.....96_1343749

  70. Jeff Harmon

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    After a substancial amount of reading, I have switched to be a supporter of Ron Paul. I even donated $15 (a lot for a 24 year old student who is broke and has never donated anything but his church in his life).

    But when I see people all over the web shouting things like, “now you know Ron Paul is for real!” It just makes me cringe. When I first heard about Ron Paul from one of my coworkers, I have to honestly say that I thought “wacko”. A year later I am a convert.

    We need to be pursausive and educating not obnoxious. We will get much further if we just teach the principles of freedom. When you are working with a startup company and you finally get some press you don’t yelling at the people and say, “IT’S ABOUT TIME!” You thank them and encourage more.

  71. ajadoniz

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:53 pm

    LOUD NOISES!

  72. ssst

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    when i clicked on support ronpaul from a particular group it would let me add ron paul to the politicians i support

  73. beava

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:55 pm

    @63

    Lighten up. RP fanboys are a turnoff.

  74. Mr. Stanley Russell Dudek

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    It’s working again.

  75. Pete Bentiez

    November 7th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    Just be aware that a few well placed phone calls from Ron Paul supporters (me being one of them) went a long way to alter the “glitch” in the system that kept Ron Paul from being seen. They were almost confused as to how we got their number, and many of us called about this.

  76. Robin

    November 7th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    They’re back, at least for me.

  77. Ron Paul 2008

    November 7th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    @71

    I luv you too…joy to the world!

  78. Mark

    November 7th, 2007 at 4:38 pm

    LOL! As a Facebook developer with 2 of the top 100 apps, I can vouch that Facebook’s search is very very wonky. I am constantly using the search to monitor apps and groups and it would surprise me if the search DID work consistently. To say this is some sort of conspiracy is absolutely ridiclous.

  79. amy

    November 7th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    yea, facebook search is pretty useless in general. it gives you way too many results with no clear way to narrow them down or zero.

  80. Don Wilson

    November 7th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    “blames this on a bug”

    That’s the funniest thing I’ve read today.

  81. Juan Gomez DeVincezo Mordida

    November 7th, 2007 at 5:25 pm

    Remember,
    The CIA funded Facebook and the CIA dont want to see Ron Paul take ober he might make the CIA and facebook go away. Kinda like taxes.

  82. AnonTroll

    November 7th, 2007 at 5:28 pm

    Mark Suckerberg says a bug??!?!?! Yeah it’s a bug alright when Suckerberg hard coded “Ron Paul” into his anti-Ron Paul code.

  83. sue

    November 7th, 2007 at 5:31 pm

    I still want to know why Mikey failed to ask Romney how he could actually believe in a religion founded on a guy returning from the hills after talking with God. A religion that actually believes that the husband must call his wife to join him in heaven.

    Who in their right mind would want our country led by a man with such beliefs? Who cares what he thinks about business policy. Who knows what God may tell him to do down the road!

    I think we have already learned when we have a crazy man in the Whitehouse!

  84. Todd

    November 7th, 2007 at 5:43 pm

    Maybe Sean Hannity works at Facebook and was trying to silence Ron Paul, as usual. ;) Ron Paul can’t be stopped…he is a serious force in this election like it or not.

  85. Mark Suckerberg

    November 7th, 2007 at 5:57 pm

    Nov 6, 2007
    “Bang bang bang” Suckerberg’s mom attempted to wake him up for his big NY Facebook advertising announcement by banging on his bedroom door.
    Suckerberg’s mom: “Get up Mark, or you are going to be late. Get up now or I am coming in to wake yo ass up!”
    Suckerberg panics because he isn’t done fantasizing about Pam Anderson yet.
    Suckerberg screams: “NOOOO MOM, don’t come in, I am not ready yet”
    Suckerberg’s mom: “EWWWWWWW, you better not be doing what I think you are doing in there, disgusting”
    Suckerberg thinks to himself, sheesh, there goes the mood.
    Suckerberg: “Ok I am coming out now”
    Stumbles out of bed into the bathroom. Looked into the mirror and freaked out. OMG, zits, they are everywhere. He proceeded to pop all the zits and lathered on zits protection cream. He went back to his room and smelled his pile of clothes trying to find something to wear that don’t stink. Too bad, they all stunk to high heaven. He screams out the door “MOOOOOOOM, do I have any clean underwear, t-shirt, and pants?”
    Suckerberg’s mom: “Yes my boy, I did a load of laundry for you last night, they are still in the dryer”.

    Suckerberg stumbles downstairs in search of newly washed clothes and undies. As he walked past the kitchen, his mom asked “So what would you like to eat for breakfast, my $15B boy?” To which he answered, “I am going to make all of facebook users my bitches today, hehe, so I guess I will have me some bacon and eggs”.

    Not finished yet…

  86. disinter

    November 7th, 2007 at 6:12 pm

    Many thanks to Ezra!

  87. sesh

    November 7th, 2007 at 6:44 pm

    These comments have gone really downhill. Looks like stories about Ron Paul bring out the wacko’s.

  88. AnonTroll

    November 7th, 2007 at 7:02 pm

    @sesh Oh come on, where is your sense of humor? I think the Suckerberg’s parody is hilarious LOL

  89. TheChris

    November 7th, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    Saying Ron Paul = wacky is, to me, basically the same as saying the U.S. Constitution = wacky.

    I guess Mitt Romney isn’t wacky even though he would double the size of Gitmo and believes he only has to consult his lawyers before going to war.

    I don’t agree with RP 100% but those who call him wacky are likely of the following mold:

    - Elitist, greedy, supply-side, only-we-know-best neo-cons who bow down to so-called free trade capitalism which inches closer and closer to fascism.
    - People brainwashed by the above (using media, religion, etc.).

    Is RP the answer? I’d think he could help. No worries though, the currency will continue to drop and “fix” the problem regardless. The lower class will finally feel enough pain to get pissed-off and wise up a little.

  90. dak

    November 7th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    “Anyone who has ever programmed knows that it is not a ‘bug’ when one specific search term yeilds 0 results.”

    Really? I’m a programmer. I wouldn’t find it remarkable if a popular, active group suffered problems that other groups did not. Nor would I find it remarkable if several groups were affected, but the first/only group that someone noticed (or complained about) was a popular, active one.

    The fact that no other candidates were affected is precisely what I would expect. Why would a bug only affect (or affect in greater proportion) such a small set of groups? I don’t see any reason Facebook’s code would treat candidates’ groups specially. Most likely, they occasionally rebuild their search index by loading and indexing all of the groups in some order. If the problem affected multiple groups, I’d expect that the neighbors in that ordering (which may be database-determined and effectively random) would also be unsearchable. Given that, it seems extremely unlikely that the bug would affect several candidates without affecting large numbers of other groups.

    I’m not sure why Michael deemed the explanation “highly unlikely”. I wish he would explain his reasoning. The explanation is certainly plausible. It seems to me far more likely than some deliberate act of malice taken against Ron Paul on Facebook. It also strikes me that Michael is in a good position to find people to corroborate (or debunk) the claim that other groups (in addition to Ron Paul’s) were affected by the same problem. How about it? There’s little reason to deal in likelihoods when you can actually confirm or debunk the story.

  91. Jonas

    November 7th, 2007 at 9:32 pm

    @63 Ron Paul 2008 says: “Just check out http://www.ronpaul2008.com and look at what this guy stands for…if you think he is wacky…Iran has Open Enrollment for citizenship”

    Yeah, right. That’s like reading a company press release and expecting to find honest and accurate information.

    You RP supporters need to remove the blinders when it comes to Ron Paul. I can understand inexperience children being impressed with RP as underdog internet phenom but intelligent adults look to the facts.

    And RP can’t hide from the facts of his voting record. Check it out here:
    http://www.vote-smart.org/voti.....d=BC031929

    Peruse his votes on abortion/contraceptives, for example.

    Also, take a read of some of the racist and other screwy statements made in past newsletters with RP’s name attached here:
    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archi.....96_1343749

  92. Klutometis

    November 7th, 2007 at 9:53 pm

    Works for me; getting 500+ groups under “Ron Paul”.

  93. Paul Joyce

    November 7th, 2007 at 10:05 pm

    I know that Facebook has been having indexing problems today, possible related to the launch of Ads. I created a product page last night and it still doesn’t show up in the search results. It can be linked to directly, however.

  94. Patrick Henry

    November 8th, 2007 at 1:27 am

    I built a computer in 1976 with a soldering iron, and wrote my own OS. I write code all day. Faster than I speak english. I have written software and sold it in one day for over 50k. Either you have rouge code puppy over there, or it came from the top. Either way it is your fault. So send the press release that Ron Paul had so much traffic that your SQL server couldn’t handle the requests or face the music.

  95. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog

    November 8th, 2007 at 3:24 am

    It’s far more likely that a supporter of Ron Paul did this than an opponent. The bug was bound to be noticed, and look how it’s fed the RP supporter base’s massive persecution complex.

    Judging by the comments on this page, Ron Paul share the same persecution complex and impotent rage of minority cults like Scientology or fundamentalist Christianity. Thanks for setting back the cause of libertarianism in the US another four years, guys.

  96. Joe Corrao

    November 8th, 2007 at 8:01 am

    The web is spam….

  97. Daniel Travolto

    November 8th, 2007 at 8:11 am

    I just got banned and all my entries deleted on digg
    for supporting Ron Paul and saying that Rupert Murdoch cannot own the internet no matter how hard he tries

  98. Derek Scruggs

    November 8th, 2007 at 10:18 am

    I’ve generally found Facebook search to be rather sucky, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this is a bug.

  99. Mick Russom

    November 8th, 2007 at 10:53 am

    We are going to be free! Ron Paul is likely going to sweep the 2008 elections! Id say the probability he is the next POTUS is 90-95% now.

    People are screaming FREEEDOM! like William Wallace rigt now. They are going to have to kill Ron Paul like they did JFK or RK to stop him now, and I fully expect the MSM, military industrial complex and the CFR types to go after his life because the smear tactics are backfiring!

    VOTE RON PAUL FOR FREEDOM, its your **LAST CHANCE**

  100. y.a.

    November 8th, 2007 at 11:28 am

    i had a couple digg submissions on Ron Paul “buried” or they just disappeared, within an hour of their submission. one, which I titled “Paul has pull” had like 57 diggs within about an hour, then it just vanished. this article can be seen if you search digg for it, and “include buried stories”… but once a story gets buried it gets no more diggs or attention. at that rate it would have maybe 1000s of diggs in a day or two, but inexplicitely it was buried almost immediately…

    wtf?

    i looked up “burying” in the digg help pages, and it’s is EXTREMELY VAGUE. obviously someone over their has never given up the right to arbitrarily bury whatever the hell they f’in want to. go ahead and read it.

    digg, as much as i like it, is really weak and i suspect, has some heavily biased censorship going on behind the scenes…. i could go on.

    thanks

    y.a.

  101. y.a.

    November 8th, 2007 at 11:33 am

    if anyone knows a better social news site than digg, without this burying non-sense, please let us know, ok? post it here and i’ll check back in a few days or email me at:
    m ik eba ke r500 200 2( a t )y a h o o( d o t )c o m

    (no spaces! trying at avoid spambots, ok?)

    there are some stories i want to try and get out to the world that cant get past the censors or whatever mechanisms at digg or reddit and they are important

    plus, why should anyone decide

  102. Harun

    November 8th, 2007 at 5:01 pm

    No
    it’s here: http://www.facebook.com/p/Ron_Paul/732025404

  103. Howard

    November 9th, 2007 at 8:37 am

    I would just like to add that this is not just limited to searches. We were organizing a rally through facebook, but the event mysteriously later disappeared from “my events”, and couldn’t be found through searches.

    The only way I could get to it was to go through the link in my notification email.

    How do you explain that as a bug?

  104. online yarışma

    November 20th, 2007 at 6:53 am

    thanks

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