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 issues 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 more than 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.
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Some people are solacing this unfortunate incident by making memes.
https://twitter.com/FaysalM73293082/status/1562345727925587969?s=20&t=9NfIdHIyclKLu_4r7lwJNQ
https://twitter.com/irrellievancy/status/1562347886779674624?s=20&t=Nc0KqyIV7MaFf3Cb_4UV0w
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.
Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.
You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing im@ivanmehta.com or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal.
Manish Singh is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, covering India’s startup scene and venture capital investments. He also reports on global tech firms’ India play. Before joining TechCrunch in 2019, Singh wrote for about a dozen publications, including CNBC and VentureBeat. He graduated in Computer Science and Engineering in 2015. He is reachable on manish(at)techcrunch(dot)com.