What is Zuck: Facebook Algorithm Gets Out of Control, Bullying Users with Celebrity Posts and Cryptocurrency Scams

A Facebook bug on Wednesday morning was swarming with endless messages from famous accounts about crypto scams and PayPal requests, leading many to mock Mark Zuckerberg and the Masters of the Universe, and the silly messages the platform happily spread all over the place.

The Verge reported on Wednesday that Facebook users encountered a strange bug that caused their news feeds to flood with endless posts from famous accounts. Users’ feeds are flooded with small messages posted to the pages of artists like Lady Gaga, Nirvana, and The Beatles. The issue seems to have been resolved after three hours of an unavailable news feed.

Facebook spokesperson (now known as Meta) Alexandru Voica explained on Twitter that the bug was the result of a “configuration change” and has since been fixed.

Earlier today, a configuration change caused some people to experience issues with their Facebook feed. We have resolved the issue as soon as possible for anyone affected and we apologize for the inconvenience.

— Alexandru Voica Ὀ (@alexvoica) August 24, 2022

Users quickly realized that they could exploit the bug and send memes to celebrities, which would later be shared widely on the platform. The Verge reported that one photo that went viral was a picture of a turkey sandwich with the caption, “If you see this, share it on another celebrity’s Facebook page to get the turkey sandwich moving.”

Due to a mistake made by the person following the celebrity’s account, the photo was posted to be seen in the news feed.

Others posted links for PayPal donations and ads for cryptocurrency projects. Users took to Twitter to report the problem, and some posted videos of celebrity-filled news feeds.

People there massacre pic.twitter.com/DgpmcwuiCn

— Jon Porter (@JonPorty) August 24, 2022

Someone else’s Facebook has been hacked or I’ve been hacked. This is my entire tape. pic.twitter.com/nQwvtLqRjT

– Chris (@chrismarle) August 24, 2022

This morning, Facebook sent the wrong code to production. Facebook users’ feeds are overflowing with messages from people they don’t know or don’t follow to famous celebrities. This has made the social networking website practically usable (more than ever).

*not our photos pic.twitter.com/lT18xi9A0X

— vx-underground (@vxunderground) August 24, 2022

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