Yesterday we reported on a Facebook screenshot that replaced the Advertising tab to read as the “Lying” tab. We initially thought the screen shot may have been a hoax because of the tab’s alignment, but later learned that the screen shot wasn’t altered. What we didn’t learn yesterday, however, is what Facebook had to say about it.
In the face of having a serious and ongoing issue with the public perception of its ad network, Facebook has revealed today that the word “Lying” appeared as a result of its language translation application, reports TechCrunch. This was, in fact, an English to English auto-translation that managed to allow the word lying to replace the advertising tab in certain regions.
It’s because of Facebook’s language translation app, which relies on users to recommend words for translating Facebook’s interface on a global scale. So perhaps some user thought it would be funny to recommend the word “lying” for “advertising” and this was ultimately some sort of prank after all.
Whatever the case may be, the seemingly minor break down in the system itself has had larger implications overall, especially when it affects something as important as Facebook’s advertising platform. Facebook may need to make some tweaks to its translations application, especially if similar mistakes could happen in other areas of the world.
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Wow. That's really unfortunate. When crowdsourcing fails.
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Comment by reuben steiger — January 7, 2009 @ 5:03 pm
LULZ
Comment by Ray Ray Angel — January 7, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
I thought we were getting some honesty here finally on what the early advertisers were doing on the platform. But thank goodness that it's being cleaned up. See the interview with Facebook yesterday about ad approvals: http://www.purposeinc.com/pwp/2009/06/02/facebook...
Comment by Dennis Yu — June 3, 2009 @ 3:29 pm