On the morning of Wednesday August 24, Facebook was hit with a strange bug that filled the News Feed with incongruous and often old posts, with the amusing results. Everything went back to normal quickly.
If you have consulted Facebook on the morning of Wednesday, August 24, you must have been somewhat surprised by what was showing up in your newsfeed. And for good reason: it didn’t display the latest posts from your friends and the people or pages you follow, as usual. Instead, you must have seen posts from complete strangers or, on the contrary, from various celebrities that you have absolutely no interest in. Even more curiously, by refreshing the page, the thread brought up old publications, dating back several days or even weeks, a bit as if by chance, with perfectly incongruous suggestions. In short, it was a complete bazaar on the social network!
Rest assured if you have encountered this problem: you are not alone. As we could see on DownDetector, the site that tracks incidents on major platforms and carriers, many users reported an issue on Facebook, mostly between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. on the morning of August 24. The number of reports began to drop from 9 a.m., a sign that the situation was gradually returning to normal. But not for everyone, because we could still see strange behavior at 10 a.m. In addition, the problem does not seem to have affected everyone, some users of the social network finding their news feed completely normal.
Moreover, even if Facebook – or Meta – has not yet officially communicated on the subject, it is obviously not a general and blocking failure as the social network sometimes experiences. Everything suggests that the algorithm defining what is displayed in the news feed is the victim of a simple bug. A confusing, but rather amusing bug, since it makes improbable, irrelevant publications appear, leaving a feeling of chaos. The reactions – often mocking and parodic – were obviously quick on other social networks, with sometimes hilarious testimonies. Some have seen tons of comments and photos posted on the thread by illustrious strangers to Shakira, others, ads for African marabouts. So many opportunities to spread mocking memes.
Anyway, in this kind of situation, which can arise at any time, the only attitude to adopt is to wait patiently. No reason to worry if this kind of bug happens again: it’s not a hack, just a temporary technical problem. Just go to sites like DownDetector, to verify that the problem is global.