Facebook users are reporting widespread problems with the social media network, as a bizarre glitch causes some news feeds to show dozens of random comments to celebrities.
Outage tracking site Downdetector showed thousands of reports submitted on Wednesday night, with statistics suggesting more than 80 per cent of reports were of problems with news feeds.
Users swarmed to other social media platforms to complain of the strange notifications of comments, with many wondering if their accounts had been hacked.
Screenshots showed news feeds full of users posting comments to the accounts of Taylor Swift, Eminem and Cristiano Ronaldo and others.
“Is anyone else’s Facebook broken or have I been hacked. This is my entire feed,” one person wrote on Twitter.
Tweet from @chrismearle
The hashtags #facebookhacked and #facebookdown trended on Twitter, with users venting their frustrations with the buggy platform.
Downdetector data showed the number of Australian Facebook users who reported the bug peaked at 1436 just before 5pm (AEST) on Wednesday.
Downdetector also reported that 14 per cent of users had problems with their Facebook app.
The issue was said to have been resolved by about 7pm. However, users caught on to the site’s meltdown and spammed celebrity accounts with posts, exacerbating the chaos.
Facebook has since responded in a statement advising the issue had been resolved.
“A configuration change caused some people to have trouble with their Facebook feed,” it said.
“We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologise for any inconvenience.”
It is unclear how widespread the outage was. Reports suggest the glitch affected Facebook in multiple countries across desktop and mobile.
In October 2021, three of the world’s biggest social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – suffered a global outage that lasted more than six hours.
