UPDATE: No Pro-Polanski Facebook Vigilante Is Blocking Anti-Polanski Facebook Posts

File this under “People Who Think They Are Helping Roman Polanski Really Aren’t”: At least one pro-Polanski online activist has blocked at least one Facebook user critical of Polanski from posting anything to do with Polanski to her Facebook page. Bi-zarre.

Update: Not so bizarre. Story updated below.

Keli Goff, who last week wrote a piece for Mediaite critical of Polanski and his Hollywood supporters called “Why Doesn’t Middle America Trust Hollywood Liberals? Two Words: Roman Polanski,” had posted a similar piece at HuffPo and had posted it to her Facebook page last Wednesday. On Friday, she sent me a confused email asking me if I had tried posting Polanski articles to Facebook. She was trying to post the following and having no luck:

Chris Rock weighs in on Polanski. Hilarity ensues: http://tiny.cc/hdmKr

I tried posting it to my page and it worked fine. I tried posting another Polanski link to my page; it also worked. Keli, meanwhile, tried to post a news article reporting that California governor Arnold Schwarzennegger had refused to pardon Polanski — no dice.

She has since then been unable to post material about Polanski on her Facebook page — legitimate, non-abusive material — and when she tries, she gets the following message:

Keli has no idea who would have reported her to Facebook as abusive; she has received no communication on the matter from Facebook or anyone. In the interim, Keli tells me she has requested an answer from Facebook’s spokesperson Barry Schnitt but has received no response, and is also waiting to hear back from someone in their DC office after friends with contacts there reported her issue. I also tried posting a Polanski page to her wall, and it worked; however, she’s still unable to.

Could this be a fluke? Maybe — but doubtful, since it appears that Polanski-themed spamming is going around. Over at Patterico’s Pontifications, Patrick Frey has numerous posts detailing how he was spammed by an associate producer for the pro-Polanski film, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. Patterico had identified the associate producer, Michelle Sullivan, through an intricate trail of online breadcrumbs, and she admitted to having left numerous angry anonymous comments in support of Polanski on posts written by Patterico. Patterico also tied her to comments on Polanski-related articles at the Daily Beast.

So: We know that there is at least one, perhaps more pro-Polanski person or persons targeting people who are critical of the embattled director online. And, I guess, we also know that Facebook will suspend your posting privileges without contacting you. Oh, we also know this: Trying to block Facebook articles about Roman Polanski will probably really, really help his public image. Sheesh.

Anyone else out there have similar experiences with Polanski-related material? Let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: Facebook’s Barry Schnitt weighed in here last night at 7:07 p.m. with the following statement:

Try posting just the domain to your Fb profile (http://tiny.cc/). You’ll see that it is also blocked. That means, we were seeing and/or users were reporting a lot of spam hiding behind that URL shortener, so we temporarily blocked all sharing of the entire domain. Ms. Goff’s posts using the same URL shortener would have been blocked regardless of the content to which they were pointing. We’re sorry for the minor inconvenience but it was done to protect users from spam.

I’m also sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists out there but the suggestion that we would be taking sides in the debate about Mr. Polanski or even between two users is absurd.

He sent a similar response to answer Keli’s inquiry yesterday at 7:49 p.m. Our attention was called to both this morning.

So, good! Mystery solved. Keli was not flagged as abusive by any crazy pro-Polanski activist. But Schnitt’s answer does deserve a bit of a response. So here we go:

(1) How long it took to get it. According to Keli, she emailed him Friday evening at his work address and via Facebook on Saturday afternoon. No response. I get that Facebook is a huge company, but, well, Facebook is a huge company. Being on top of this stuff means nipping question marks like this in the bud.

(2) Conspiracy theorists. It did sound ridiculous off the bat — which was why Keli and I watched it over the weekend, and waited to see if there was a response. What is it they say, it’s not paranoid if they’re really after you? Well, Patrick Frey’s experience as detailed on Patterico is pretty indicative of a vociferous response. The other comments are similarly indicative; more generally, online flame wars have broken out over far less.

(3) “The suggestion that we would be taking sides in the debate about Mr. Polanski or even between two users is absurd.” This is a bit rich coming from Facebook. There are regularly controversies over content, over much more hot-button issues (Holocaust denial, Israel-Palestinian issues, breastfeeding photos, photos of mastectomy scars). Facebook controversies do happen. In fact, it was my knowledge of these other issues that made me think the Polanski block was more, not less, likely to have happened — even if it was just one lone nutbar flagging content as abusive, and Facebook auto-erring on the side of caution.

So — that’s why words of caution were used in this post, saying for example that a fluke was possible but doubtful given the totality of circumstances. All information was shared with the reader, including the bit about Facebook having been contacted for comment. But when that comment is not immediately forthcoming, conclusions will be drawn. Friday to Monday is a long time on the Internet. But thanks to Barry Schnitt for clearing up the issue.

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