Can you block certain friends on Facebook from seeing comments from specific friends?

When using the Facebook comments social plugin, what do "Mark as spam" and "report abuse" actually do for the end user and the moderator?

• I'm using the Facebook comments social plugin on a newspaper blog (http://today.seattletimes.com), and users have the ability to mark certain comments as spam or abuse. But I am not sure what that really means. Does it only block the particular user from seeing the post? That user and his/her friends? Do a certain amount of abuse reports remove the comment from the entire site without moderator action? Facebook documentation makes no mention of what actually happens when this action is taken.

• Answer:

  As far as I know, there isn't a simple answer to this question.  To the extent there is, it changes rapidly with the product, the classifiers we have deployed at any given time, and the data feeding into them. Very roughly, "Mark as spam" is a signal that feeds into a bunch of machine learning that may eventually take all manner of different actions.  "Report abuse" is as well, but I think is intended for more serious things like bullying or violent threats. If you see something that's spammy, hit mark as spam - it's not going to hurt.  If you see something that's threatening or bullying, hit report abuse. (I work on spam-fighting systems at FB, but not directly on this particular bit.)