Thousands of Facebook users worldwide reported problems with their news feeds on Wednesday, as a bug appeared to push posts to celebrity fan pages and groups to the top of timelines.
Users on Downdetector, an outage tracking website, reported problems between 07:00 and 09:00 BST.
Memes mocking Facebook were created in response to the glitch.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, apologize “for any inconvenience” and stated that the problem had been resolved.
According to a BBC spokesperson, “A configuration change earlier today caused some people to experience issues with their Facebook feed. We worked quickly to resolve the problem for everyone who was affected.”
Concerns about power outages
A total of 81% of the reports received by Downdetector mentioned problems with Facebook feeds, with the remainder mentioning the app or website specifically.
When users opened Facebook on mobile or desktop, they were greeted with chronological posts from celebrity pages and groups.
Some made fun of Facebook’s spam-like error by posting memes to popular fan pages, such as those for Kim Kardashian, the Rolling Stones, and Taylor Swift. Others took advantage of the opportunity to promote GoFundMe and PayPal fundraising campaigns.
Concerns about the absence of content posted by friends and family, which is usually visible at the top of users’ main feeds, led many to speculate that Facebook had been hacked or flooded with spam.
Fears of a Facebook outage have grown more common since WhatsApp and other Meta-powered apps went down for six hours last October.
Facebook feed modifications
The problem arises after Meta announced new Facebook feed changes last month.
On Facebook’s mobile iOS and Android versions, these introduced new options for customising feeds in a separate tab.
Meta has been chastised for changes made to Facebook and Instagram to help it compete with TikTok and its short-form video success.
Users can now create reels from Facebook’s homepage, giving them more control over the content they see and discover.
