Facebook bug causes feed to fill up with celeb pages and fan comments

Facebook says to fix the bug that caused feeds to fill up with spam and memes for hours

Users were bombarded with spam for three hours straight

A bizarre bug caused issues with Facebook feeds for users across the world on Wednesday morning. The content was exchanged with endless posts from celebrity accounts.^[1] Many users who attempted to use the social media platform normally got greeted with the issue of additional content, and the main news Feed flooded with various minor posts sent to pages of celebrities like Nirvana, The Beatles, Lady Gaga, Metallica.^[2] The problem was resolved by 5:15 AM ET, meaning that the chaos lasted for at least three hours.

The Facebook spokesperson said that the bug was caused by the configuration change, and it led to trouble with the Facebook Feed for many users. The company stated that the error was fixed properly. Numerous users have been complaining on social media and other platforms for those three hours, and people used to bug to fill those celebrity posts with random memes and other spam content.

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

Posts were taking over the main feed that users normally can use to access streams of images, stories, videos, and posts shared by friends. The bug is the first of its kind in memory. When any person posts or engages with the celebrity page or post you have liked, those posts appear on your feed, and it comes up every time people post or comments on such content. These were the issues with the Facebook bug.^[3]

Multiple issues with Facebook on Wednesday

Many users complained about the issue with their feeds, but other users also faced the problem of the outage on Facebook. A third-party service that is hired to monitor internet services reported that. It is unknown whether these outages and other issues were related to the glitch and the primary bug or whether additional issues with the social media were just triggered by the content spam.

Facebook is the platform that reaches at least 3 billion people each month via all the applications that are linked to the Meta company.^[4] The platform tried to overhaul the news feed by renaming it to just feed this year and introducing a new tab to display posts from friends on social media and family in reverse chronological order.

The popularity of this social media has dwindled this year. It seems that 32% of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 use Facebook, with only 2% of them using the social media site regularly. Meta stated that revenue has been declining, and it seems that daily user losses are growing in numbers still.

Problems with Facebook since the major changes

The growth of user numbers has subdued and hit the ceiling, but this is not the only problem with Meta and these social media programs. Facebook has already admitted to facing the decline as never before. During these 18 years, the platform had the ability to bring more new users, but the platform reached its peak.^[5]

The business model that Meta uses has been affected significantly by Apple's change to App tracking transparency. iPhone owners have the choice to let apps track them and monitor online activities or not. Facebook cannot continue its business due to that. Other apps like this must explicitly ask people for permission to track their habits and behavior, so people opted out of this. Fewer user data for Facebook.

Google also gathers the advertising share, so ads cannot be monetized and used as before, so Facebook faces the issue since the company is dependent on ad revenue. TikTok, Twitter, and Reels' popularity mean that people are rarely going on Facebook, and quick content is more attractive. These numbers that get smaller and more privacy and security concerns might indicate the end of social media like this.