Facebook's Spam Program Catches Activists

PITTSBURGH — Facebook says it's made changes since environmental activists and other people were blocked from posting on like-minded Facebook pages.

The activists worried they were victims of censorship, but the real culprit was an anti-spam computer algorithm, impersonally doing what its program told it to do.

Experts agree that Facebook and other social media sites simply must use automated programs to protect against spam, but they say more can be done to protect innocent people from losing access.