Facebook wants you to know it didn’t mean to autofill your video searches with, ahem, explicit suggestions.

Several users were greeted with sexual and violent recommendations on Thursday night — including child pornography — after entering “video of” in Facebook’s search bar

Quartz’s Mike Murphy, among others, shared a screenshot of the suggestions on Twitter.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh pic.twitter.com/tGuHvMLKzL

— Mike Murphy (@mcwm) March 16, 2018

Daily Caller writer Jonah Bennett asked his followers to share their results, with one user sharing a suggestion for “video of little girl sucking.” Others tweeted similar recommendations.

???? pic.twitter.com/7XU3kEq1tU

— Jevaughn Brown (@Jevaughn_Brown) March 16, 2018

Facebook blocks sexually explicit material, and there was no evidence users were hit with results for the vulgar suggestions. The suggestions were removed by Friday morning, and the company issued an apology — indicating the predictions actually reflected popular searches from users.

“We’re very sorry this happened. As soon as we became aware of these offensive predictions we removed them,” said the social network in a statement to TheWrap. “Facebook search predictions are representative of what people may be searching for on Facebook and are not necessarily reflective of actual content on the platform. We do not allow sexually explicit imagery, and we are committed to keeping such content off of our site. We are looking into why these search predictions appeared, and going forward, we’re working to improve the quality of search predictions.”

The apology comes at a time when Facebook is looking to revamp its News Feed. The social network admitted more than 100 million Americans viewed Russian troll content before and after the 2016 election — something CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was “dead serious” about squashing. And earlier this week, Facebook confirmed its looking to curb misinformation by partnering with 10 publishers for video content, ahead of the 2018 U.S. midterms. You can now add stamping out explicit search results to its “to do” list.

6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)

Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post

The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”

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Chris Hughes - The New Republic

The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."

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Pierre Omidyar - The Intercept

The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”

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Peter Thiel

The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.

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Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook

OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.

Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.

Also Read: 3 Ways Facebook Can Jump Into the News Business
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Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse

Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.

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