Facebook is experiencing a strange bug allowing users to spam others’ news feeds with bizarre content by posting them to celebrity pages and other widely-followed accounts.
The platform’s algorithm appears to push posts made to celebrity and well-known Facebook pages to users’ news feeds.
Examples include posts made to Katy Perry, Usher, Nick Jonas, Dude Perfect, One Direction, and popular meme-sharing pages.
One example is an image of a turkey sandwich with the caption, “If you see this share it to another celebrities Facebook page keep the turkey sandwich moving” [sic].
This particular image has been widely shared on celebrity Facebook pages.
The Verge reports that Facebook users are exploiting the bug by posting memes to celebrities with the knowledge that they will be shared extensively.
It also said some Facebook users are spamming PayPal donation links and promoting cryptocurrency pages through the bug.
While the issue isn’t technically an outage, there are numerous reports of problems with Facebook’s feed on Downdetector.
“nathanwpyle are you aware that there is a massive Facebook page glitch? People are posting to your page and they’re showing in people’s feeds. It’s spam central!” one user said on Twitter.
ALSO READ: Facebook and Instagram competes with TikTok, pushes more content.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in July revealed plans to more than double the suggested content on its platforms to compete with TikTok.
He said the changes would see Facebook and Instagram move away from focusing on showing posts from friends lists towards recommending all publicly shared content on the services.
“AI finds additional content that people find interesting, that increases engagement and the quality of our feeds,” Zuckerberg said.
According to Zuckerberg, recommended content currently makes up around 15% of the posts on Facebook, with the percentage being higher on Instagram.
The changes revealed by Zuckerberg will more than double the recommended content pushed to Facebook and Instagram users.
Source: My Broadband