If you were one of the hundreds of millions using Facebook on Wednesday morning, you may have experienced a major bug. Specifically, the social network was bombarding users with endless posts coming from celebrity accounts.
Essentially, the News Feed on Facebook was overwhelmed by spam posts of minor posts from musicians such as The Beatles and Nirvana. It now seems Meta has the situation under control, but the chaos was ongoing for over three hours.
Taking to Twitter, Meta spokesperson Alexandra Voica confirmed the situation, saying it was caused by a “configuration change.”
Seeing the funny side of the situation, users used the bug to send memes to celebrities, knowing they would then be reshared as spam to millions of users. For example, an image sent to Lady Gaga as a meme would then show up on the News Feed of other users.
Others seized the opportunity in more economic ways, spamming PayPal donation links or promoting their projects.
Earlier today, a configuration change caused some people to have trouble with their Facebook Feed. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
— Alexandru Voica 💀 (@alexvoica) August 24, 2022
IG Candid
In other Meta news this week, the company confirmed it is working on a new feature that seemingly copies the controversial BeReal app.
BeReal has been growing in popularity in recent weeks, while also drawing plenty of negativity. It works by sending a notification to users at random intervals during the day, giving them two minutes to take a rear and selfie photo at the same time.
Meta's new feature – known as IG Candia – will bring the same ability to Instagram.
Tip of the day: Though many VPN providers have their own apps, you can in many cases connect to a VPN in Windows without any third-party software. This is ideal if you have a self-hosted VPN or if you're using a PC with restricted permissions. In our tutorial, we're showing you how to connect to a VPN in Windows.