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French Hacker Targets Little Kid With Facebook Prank

by Amar Toor on January 31, 2011 at 12:15 PM

french facebook block prompt
Whenever you choose to block or report a person on Facebook, the social network prompts you to choose from an automatically generated list of reasons for your action. On the English version of the site, you'll see options like "Inappropriate profile picture," or "Inappropriate Wall post." On the French site, however, recent visitors may have noticed an additional option, concerning not fake profiles or offensive behavior, but someone's smack-talking little brother.

Here's how it happened. Apparently, Facebook relies on crowd-sourced translations for developing its platform in foreign languages. Users in non-English speaking countries can submit their own translations of, say, "friend request," or any other Facebook-related term or phrase, and "vote up" any other submitted translations. The highest-rated interpretation is ultimately what appears on Facebook's platform in a given country, but, as some French hacker just proved, the system isn't completely foolproof.

Somehow, the rogue jester managed to insert the following, grammatically incorrect phrase into Facebook's 'report/block person' menu: "En discution instantané, Le petit frère de Dylan Zéroosiix m'a insulter." (Translation: "Over instant messenger, the little brother of Dylan Zéroosiix insulted me.") Dylan Zéroosiix, in case you're wondering, is this little guy. No one knows who his little brother is, but we're guessing he looks even more harmless than Dylan does. It's equally unclear whether baby bro was the target, or, perhaps, the mastermind behind this joke -- if you wanna call it that. Either way, Facebook should probably start developing a better translation system, and French people should probably start developing better pranks.

Tags: brothers, facebook, france, french, hacker, joke, kids, pranks, SocialNetworking, top, translation, Web

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