For several hours Wednesday, Facebook users all over the world complained to the company that their newsfeeds were being spammed.
The spam flooded feeds with everything from celebrity-based accounts to random strangers they had never met, usurping spots normally taken up by actual friends and family.
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The problem ran concurrently with an outage issue for many users, prompting questions about whether the two were linked.
“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,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. (Meta is Facebook’s parent company.)
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While the feed problem was later fixed, the issue was just another bit of bad publicity for the social media giant, which has seen its ability to attract younger users fall flat amid privacy of information scandals.
In a recent study, the Pew Research Center found that only 32% of teenagers between 13 and 17 use the site at all, and only 2% use it regularly, and the most recent business quarter, 2022 Q2, saw Meta post a revenue decline for the first time in its history.