Facebook looked different for at least a couple of thousands of users when they logged in earlier today. Instead of seeing posts from their friends and from the groups they’re in, they saw their feeds spammed with random people’s posts on celebrities’ pages instead. As UK news organization Sky News reports, users posted about their dilemma on other social networks like Twitter, showing the state of their News Feeds with screenshots.
Apparently, everyone following a certain celebrity page — say, The Rock’s — were getting everything other people were posting on it in their timelines. Since users tend to follow multiple celebrities, their feeds got clogged with posts from strangers on the website. Some reportedly even used the opportunity to promote their businesses or look for jobs.
While there are no official stats on what percentage of users was affected, over 2,600 people have reported the issue to DownDetector over the past few hours. Over 80 percent of the reports came from people using the desktop version of the social network, with the rest reporting issues with the app.
Sky News also says outages had been reported not just in the UK, but also in the US, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Italy, France, Poland and Australia. Facebook told the news organization that it’s aware of the issue, but it didn’t elaborate on what went wrong. In a newer statement provided to Metro UK, a Meta spokesperson said that the problem was caused by a “configuration change” earlier today. They added: “We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
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