Report: MLB vows to fight porn bots infiltrating Facebook streams

Porn bots have inevitably made their way into MLB Facebook chats, prompting both properties to promise to fix the user experience. (Facebook screenshot)
Porn bots have inevitably made their way into MLB Facebook chats, prompting both properties to promise to fix the user experience. (Facebook screenshot)

Porn bots are targeting baseball fans.

The Athletic’s Zach Buchanan noticed an onslaught of unrelated chatter during Thursday’s Facebook Live stream of the game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Philadelphia Phillies.

Buchanan highlighted posts from users Jessica Cox and Barbara Dustin Yuhas sporting suggestive emojis and chatting about non-baseball related activities.

Suspecting the activity coming from spam accounts inviting users to visit adult web cams, Buchanan reached out to MLB and Facebook for comment.

Both responded, vowing to make the MLB streams a less naughty experience.

“This is a concern and we are working with Facebook to ensure the proper safeguards are in place,” an MLB spokesperson told The Athletic.

A Facebook spokesperson vowed a specific line of attack to eliminate the scourge.

“There is no place for activity such as this during these MLB broadcasts. These comments were posted by inauthentic accounts, which are not allowed on our platform. We have deleted these accounts and are working to prevent this type of abuse from occurring again.”

For MLB, having porn randomly pop up on what’s intended to be family friendly fare is obviously an issue that needs to be addressed.

For Facebook, it seems like standard operating for a platform that diffuses users with uninvited content and faces a multitude of much more serious issues to fix.

H/T @ Awful Announcing

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