People are all a’tither about the gray box – or grey box, depending on where you’re from – that has been obscuring the things they are typing on Facebook. Some people are sure that it’s Facebook spying on what they are saying, others are confident that it’s Facebook’s AI doing…something. Still others assert with certainty that it’s some kind of new-fangled Facebook censorship. As usual with these things, it’s nothing so sinister.

Remember that old adage, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity? Or, in this case, technology issues?

Not Censorship

It turns out that it’s an issue between Facebook’s interface and the most recent versions of the Facebook app for iOS. In fact, if you go to Facebook in a browser (instead of an iPhone) you’ll see that it doesn’t happen at all.

But that hasn’t stopped people from spinning out all sorts of wild conspiracy theories. Here are just a few comments we’ve seen about the gray box on Facebook:

“A gray box appearing when you comment on Facebook usually indicates that your comment is currently being reviewed by Facebook’s system for potential violations of their Community Standards; this could be due to flagged words, phrases, or content that might be considered inappropriate or harmful. Key points about the gray box: Pending status: While the box is visible, your comment is not yet fully visible to others on the post. e Reason for review: Facebook might be checking for hate speech, bullying, spam, violation of community standards.”

(To be clear, the above is completely untrue. Sadly, the person who shared this from someone else indicated that the someone else was “someone they trust”. And this, boys and girls, is exactly how misinformation is spread on social media.)

Here’s another one – again completely inaccurate, and not reliable “testing”:

“I learned something today that is very disconcerting…I saw that when I make a comment sometimes a gray, see though box will appear over the comment I’m typing. After doing some research I found that Facebook is actually “hiding” comments. When you see a gray box when you type that means you can see the comment but no one else can. I tested it…there was a post that asked what is the US known for. I purposely typed a negative word…I typed “Broken.” I immediately got the gray box. Then I deleted the word and typed in “Love and kindness.” No gray box. So I tried it again. I typed “Broken” got the gray box. Typed “Love and kindness” no gray box. Facebook is actually stopping us from posting how we truly feel when we comment. I started noticing the “gray box” yesterday. Facebook is actually stopping us from using certain words or phrases?”

All of this is readily disproven by using a browser, where it won’t happen at all. Same with Android devices.

We mean, if Facebook were doing something like that, they wouldn’t limit it to iPhones. Or would they?