World / Internet

Facebook 'down' as users report bizarre glitches

21:47 pm on 24 August 2022

Facebook users have reported widespread problems on the social media network, with feeds showing dozens of random comments to celebrities.

Facebook has been having a peculiar outage. Photo: AFP

Users flocked to Twitter to complain of feeds flooded with notifications of comments posted to the accounts of Taylor Swift, Eminem and Cristiano Ronaldo among others.

Outage tracking site Downdetector showed thousands of reports submitted since around 3.20pm AEST, with #facebookhacked and #facebookdown trending on Twitter.

Downdetector stats suggest more than 80 percent of reports are of problems to the feed, with the app accounting for 14 percent.

Among those flagging the problem, @lilyivettec tweeted: "Facebook please fix this soon its uncomfortable to scroll through all that."

Facebook has not yet confirmed any outage or issue with the site.

The accounts affected are some of Facebook's biggest, with Ronaldo accounting for some 152 million followers alone.

In October 2021 an outage saw Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram go offline for about six hours.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg lost $US9.6 billion as the company's share price plunged.

The latest issue comes a day after Facebook's parent company Meta reached a US$37.5 million (NZ$60m) settlement over claims that it violated users' privacy.

The settlement resolved claims that Facebook broke Californian law and its own privacy policy by gathering data from users who turned off location services on their phones.

- ABC/Reuters