Facebook glitch live: Users worry site has been hacked as bug brings chaos to news feed

Facebook feeds around the world have turned to chaos after a major bug.

An apparent problem with the site’s architecture means that users are seeing a bizarre array of posts, rather than the usual updates from friends and pages they follow.

Instead, users are subjected to a flurry of comments from strangers that have been left on celebrities pages.

If a person follows Lady Gaga, for instance, then their feed will be made up almost entirely of posts on her page as well as those on other celebrities.

Users have taken advantage of the chaos to post memes as well as to push their own personal projects, promoting them into other people’s feeds.

Key points

• Has Facebook been hacked?

• Read our full story on the problems

• What the unusual bug looks like

• Facebook working to fix issue

Issue appears to have been fixed

10:56 , Andrew Griffin

Reports of problems are dropping and people’s news feeds are back to normal. Three or four hours after the problems began, people are seeing their friends’ posts again.

Facebook says it is trying to fix the problem

10:07 , Andrew Griffin

Facebook said it aware of the problem and working to fix it.

“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 apologise for any inconvenience,” a spokesperson for parent company Meta said.

What the unusual bug looks like

09:39 , Andrew Griffin

This is roughly what the problem looks like. What celebrities’ pages you see will depend on which you follow – this person just happens to follow Eminem and Billie Eilish. But it gives you a sense of what’s going on.

Facebook hit by strange glitch as bizarre posts start appearing in feeds

09:31 , Andrew Griffin

Read our full story on the problems here.

Has Facebook been hacked?

09:28 , Andrew Griffin

The problems have led many users to speculate that Facebook has been hacked – either their own account or the company as a whole.

But there is no indication that the problems are the work of anyone outside of the company, or that they are the result of anything other than a badly rolled out update or other internal mistake.

Hello and welcome...

09:27 , Andrew Griffin

... to The Independent’s live coverage of an ongoing bug that has practically broken the Facebook news feed.