Facebook fixes strange bug that spammed everyone's feed with celebrity fan posts
Update August 24, 2022, 6:10 AM ET: A Facebook spokesperson said that the bug was caused by a configuration change and it "caused some people to have trouble with their Facebook Feed," and the company has now fixed the error.
The original story follows
Facebook said Wednesday that it's aware that some users are seeing bizarre posts on their feeds and assured it's working to resolve the issue. Numerous users from around the globe have been complaining for over three hours about seeing random posts and activity tickers to celebrities' pages from strangers on their timelines.
These posts are taking over users' main feed (including Ivan's) and suppressing the usual stream of images, videos and other stories shared by friends. The existence of the bug, the first of its kind in memory, means that if any stranger posts to — or engages with — a celebrity's page that you've liked, those posts and activities are likely to make an appearance on your feed.
Several users also reported facing outage issue with Facebook on Wednesday, according to DownDetector, a third-party service that monitors internet services. It's unclear whether the outage is linked to the aforementioned glitch.
"We're aware that some people are having trouble with their Facebook Feed. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience," a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement.
Facebook, which reaches over 3 billion people each month through its family of apps, has this year tried to overhaul the news feed by renaming it to just "feed" and introducing a new tab to display posts from your friends and family in reverse chronological order.
Some people are solacing this unfortunate incident by making memes.
#facebookhacked #facebookdown #facebook
they even rick rolling me from the spams lmfao pic.twitter.com/FDDlGz7iSg
— vlad landa (@FaysalM73293082) August 24, 2022
is anyone else's facebook feed completely cooked right now and just showing loads of spam comments posted on facebook pages? pic.twitter.com/4PAxpfMbij
— ellie | 주혜 (@irrellievancy) August 24, 2022
Image Credits: Facebook
The social network's popularity has dwindled in the past few years. A recent study by the Pew Research Center suggested that only 32% of teens aged 13-17 use Facebook with only 2% of teens using it regularly. In its Q2 2022 result, Meta posted the first ever revenue decline in the history of the company. In February, the company reported a loss in daily active users for the first time.
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