Remember when you could post, comment and like on Facebook? Those were the days
Letâs see: Facebook doesnât work on Wednesdays and Fridays. Check. Thursdays are OK though.
Itâs another one of those days where the Facebook bug that began on Wednesday (though, really, itâs been going on for yearsâincluding the famous outage of 2013 where what I am experiencing happened worldwide to a large number of users) has decided to resurface and spread. Not only can I no longer like, comment, post or share without repeated attempts, I cannot delete (Facebook makes me repeat those attempts even when a post has been successful, but doesnât show me those till an hour later) or upload photos to messaging without repeated attempts.
The deletion is the hardest: while commenting will work after three to twelve repeats, deletion does not work at all. The dialogue box emerges, and you can click âDeleteâ. The button goes light for a while, then itâs back to the usual blue.
And this happens regardless of platform: Mac, Windows, Firefox, Opera, Android, inside a virtual machine, you name it. Javaâs been updated as have the browsers on my most used machines; but it seems the configurations make no difference.
I am reminded how a year ago I had even less on Facebook. Quite a number of users were blocked for days (Facebook isnât open on weekends, it seems), but eventually the message got through and things started working again.
My theory, and Iâd be interested to learn if it holds any water, is that older or more active accounts are problematic. I mean, if spammers and spambots have more rights than legitimate users, then something is wonky; and the only thing I can see that those T&C-violating accounts have over ours is novelty. Facebook hasnât got to them yet, or it tacitly endorses them.
As one of the beta users on Vox.com many years ago, I eventually found myself unable to compose a new blog post. Itâs an old story which I have told many times on this blog. Even Six Apart staff couldnât do it when using my username and password from their own HQ. But, they never fixed it. It was a âshrug your shouldersâ moment, because Vox was on its way out anyway at the company. (The domain is now owned by another firm, and is a very good news website.) Unlike Facebook, they did have theories, and tried to communicate with you to fix the issue. One woman working there wondered if I had too many keywords, and I had reached the limit. I deleted a whole lot, but nothing ever worked. It suggested that these websites did have limits.
Computer experts tell me that itâs highly unlikely Iâve reached any sort of limit on Facebook, because of how their architecture is structured, but Iâm seeing more and more of these bugs. But we are talking about a website thatâs a decade old. My account dates back to 2007. Data will have been moved about and reconstituted, because the way they were handled in 2007 is different to how they are handled now. There have been articles written about this stuff.
What if, in all these changes over the last eight years (and beyond), Facebook screwed up data transfers, corrupting certain accounts? Itâs entirely conceivable for a firm that makes plenty of mistakes and doesnât even know what time zones are. Or deletes a complainantâs account instead of the pirateâs one that she complained about. (This has been remedied, incidentally, the day after my blog post, and a strongly worded note to Facebook on behalf of my friend.)
The usual theory I hear from those in the know is that certain accounts are on certain servers, and when those are upgraded, some folks will experience difficulties. That seems fair, but I would be interested to know just what groups us together.
Last time I downloaded all my data off Facebook, and this was several years ago, I had 3 Gbyte. It wouldnât surprise me in the slightest that that was now 6 Gbyte. Thatâs a lot to handle, and when you multiply that by millions, some will result in buggy accounts. Ever had a hard drive with dodgy fragments? Or a large transfer go wrong? Facebook might have better gear than us, but itâs not perfect.
I donât believe for a second that certain people are targetedâa theory I see on forums such as Get Satisfaction, with Republicans blaming Democrats and Democrats blaming Republicansâbut I do believe that something binds us together, and it is buried within the code. But, like Vox, it may be so specific that thereâs nothing their boffins can do about it. You simply have to accept that some days, Facebook does not let you post, comment, like, share, delete or message. The concern is that this, like random deletions, can happen to anyone, because these bugs never seem to go away. Looking at my own record on Get Satisfaction, they are increasing by the year.
[…] Remember when you could post, comment and like on Facebook? Those were the days « Jack Yan: th… on My forced Facebook sabbatical […]
Dude, you can still post comments on Facebook, that option was never taken away from its users, its part of facebooks spine.
As the screen shots show, most days you can, but Facebook is so buggy that some days you canât.
[…] my activity with the site where I realistically can, and right now I donât care if I can no longer like, post, share or comment, which was becoming a very, very regular bug with Facebook anyway. (Itâs now getting more […]
[…] Your preferences mean nothing: Facebook still profiles you, even after you switch off interest-based ads « Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog on Remember when you could post, comment and like on Facebook? Those were the days […]
Hi, Jack:
Facebook is making changes all the time. Maybe this explains the bugs on the platform. Thanks for your info!
[…] It all feels very familiar, because this is the sort of bug that Facebook used to cook up, e.g. on days when you couldnât post, like, comment or share, or tag yourself in a photograph. I might save the two-minute-long video separately in […]