After their newsfeeds were deluged with random spam messages from strangers posting information on celebrity accounts, Facebook users today had a collapse.
2.8 billion members of the social network reported being affected by the strange virus that clogged news feeds with memes, pornography, and bitcoin spam.
Celebrity sites, which may have tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of followers, looked to be the focus of trolls who used the bug to send a flood of spam to those who had previously “loved” a prominent page.
Anyone posting anything to the pages of well-known musicians, sportsmen, and influencers had it disseminated to the millions of followers they had.
Normally, posts posted to well-known accounts are filtered away, but security professionals today said that recent modifications to Meta’s algorithm may have been the root of the problem.
Facebook users who were outraged quickly expressed their fury online, with many lashing out at the random postings that were flooding their news feeds.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has reported issues since 7:08 AM BST, according to website Downdetector, which tracks downtime on websites.
We’re aware that some customers are encountering issues with their Facebook Feed, a Meta representative told MailOnline. We apologise for any disruption and are trying to rapidly restore things to normal.
2.8 billion members of the social network reported being affected by the strange virus that clogged news feeds with memes, pornography, and bitcoin spam.
According to data from Downdetector, more than 2,000 users in the UK have reported issues, with 80% of them blaming their feeds for the problem.
The issue is also being reported by users in the US, Australia, and other countries.
Although Jake Moore, a security expert at ESET, claimed this is not plausible, a number of Facebook users questioned if the social network had been hacked.
‘Although it may seem that Facebook has been breached, it is more likely a technical issue brought on by a few recent algorithmic tweaks Facebook made,’ he said.
“You may need to unfollow the rogue accounts you are seeing in your feed until the problem is rectified,” the message reads.
Meta, the site’s owner, has not yet responded to the controversy.
Users of Facebook flocked to Twitter in droves to report their encounters with the strange bug.
“@facebook is down or what?” said Twitter user @maymaywala. Random comments from folks on famous profiles are flooding my feed.
@Zeeshan0961, another user, questioned: “What the heck is this @facebook? People commenting on celebrities’ walls fill my whole timeline.
As of 7:08 AM BST, Facebook has been experiencing issues, according to website Downdetector, which tracks website outages.
One Twitter user, @CallMeElektra, captured a snapshot of her Facebook feed, revealing a random poster on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ official page.
Another guy claimed it had an impact on his “entire feed” by posting screenshots of sporadic updates to the sites of bands Eminem and Billie Eilish.
One user in Melbourne, Australia, saw someone posting to the profile of American star Vin Diesel, indicating that it seems to be a worldwide problem.
It seems that not every Facebook user is impacted by the bug.
It’s conceivable that the problem is connected to broader worldwide modifications being made to Facebook’s user feed.
The Facebook site is being divided into two tabs by Meta: “Feeds,” which is focused on chronological content, and “Home,” which is focused on sponsored posts.
The Facebook app is dividing its news feed into two distinct tabs, titled “Home” and “Feeds.”
Facebook is bringing back the chronological feed as a result of customer demand, allowing users to see posts from friends in the order they were posted.
For PC and its iOS and Android applications, the social network is introducing a new tab called “Feeds” that displays the most recent postings from friends, groups, and Pages.
The main tab of the Facebook app, which users see when they launch it, has been renamed “Home.”
According to its algorithm, the Home page will continue to provide personalised suggestions for people to follow along with content that are sorted by “relevance.”
Feeds will be reminiscent of how Facebook looked more than ten years ago.
The chronological news feed on Facebook was taken away in 2011 and replaced with algorithmically generated content that prioritised the most popular friend updates.