Facebook News Feed Broken for Hours, Spammed with Bot Posts to Celebrity Pages: Report

Facebook has stated that the News Feed error was caused by a configuration change.

By Siddhant Chandra | Updated: 24 August 2022 18:47 IST

Photo Credit: Unsplash/ Dima Solomin

Facebook reportedly resolved this issue an a few hours

Highlights

Facebook celebrity pages for Robert Downey Jr, Lady Gaga were targeted
It is unclear how many accounts were affected by the glitch
Facebook users reportedly posted donation links, crypto projects

Facebook reportedly experienced a bug on Wednesday that flooded several users' News Feed with posts from celebrity pages. These were seemingly posts sent to celebrity pages on Facebook like Robert Downey Jr, Lady Gaga, Nirvana, Ajay Devgn, and more. Reports suggest that the cause of this bug could have been an attack by bots spamming the service. In addition, several Facebook users reportedly took advantage of this error by posting donation links and cryptocurrency projects, while others decided to post several memes on celebrity pages.

According to a report by The Verge, Facebook's News Feed appeared to be broken for several users on Wednesday. It was reportedly flooded by posts sent to celebrity pages like Lady Gaga, Nirvana, and The Beatles. The issue was resolved after around three hours, as per the report.

In addition, MySmartPrice speculates that the error could have been caused by bots that were spamming random posts on celebrity pages. Users reportedly took advantage of this commotion and spammed celebrity pages with donation links and cryptocurrency programs hoping to get a wide reach.

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Earlier today, a configuration change caused some people to have trouble with their Facebook Feed. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
— Alexandru Voica 💀 (@alexvoica) August 24, 2022

It is unclear how many users were affected by this bug, however, there were thousands of reports on Downdetector between 11am and 3pm IST. Facebook addressed the issue a few hours later and stated that the error was caused by a configuration change, which has been resolved.

As per a recent report, Facebook is testing a secure storage feature for end-to-end encrypted chats on Messenger on Android and iOS. This feature is expected to come in handy if a user loses their smartphone. It will allow users to retrieve their messages from end-to-end encrypted chats on Messenger. In addition, Facebook has assured users that the company will not be able to access these encrypted messages unless a user reports them.

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