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Facebook users reporting celebrity spam is flooding their feeds

Facebook's parent company, Meta, confirmed an issue with the company's feed after users reported a glitch on their feed showing spam from celebrity pages. Here, the Facebook logo is seen on a computer.
ALASTAIR PIKE
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AFP via Getty Images
Facebook's parent company, Meta, confirmed an issue with the company's feed after users reported a glitch on their feed showing spam from celebrity pages. Here, the Facebook logo is seen on a computer.

Hundreds of Facebook users are reporting a strange glitch with the social media platform Wednesday morning.

Many users reported that their feeds showed posts of people commenting on celebrity pages — even if they do not follow the person leaving the comment or the celebrity.

"Earlier today, a configuration change caused some people to have trouble with their Facebook Feed. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted and we apologize for any inconvenience," a spokesperson for Meta told NPR.

Users began reporting issues with Facebook around 2 a.m. ET, and the glitch was resolved shortly after 5 a.m. ET.

Downdetector, a service tracking real-time issues and outages with websites, reported thousands of issues related to Facebook — with 81% of complaints related to the website's feed, according to CNBC.

As of Wednesday morning, 45% of users reported issues with Facebook's feed, while only 12% of users are reporting problems with the website overall.

News of the Facebook glitch comes after Meta recently reached a $37.5 million settlement of a lawsuit that accused the tech giant of violating users' privacy.

The users, according to Reuters, said that while they did not want to share their locations with the social media platform, Meta shared their locations from their IP address.

The company is accused of using that information to send users targeted advertising, Reuters reported.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jonathan Franklin
Jonathan Franklin is a digital reporter on the News desk covering general assignment and breaking national news.