Facebook deleting posts: updates with links mysteriously disappearing from site

Issue has now been resolved and posts are gradually being restored, Facebook has said

A photo taken on May 16, 2012 shows a computer screen displaying the logo of social networking site Facebook reflected in a window before the Beijing skyline (Ed Jones/AFP/GettyImages)

A Facebook bug deleted posts by millions of users.

Statuses that included links were rejected by the site, which also seems to have retrospectively deleted updates that had already been posted.

Users attempting to include links in their posts were showed a message telling them that Facebook “believe the link you are trying to visit is malicious”. The problem seemed to appear regardless of the quality of the link that was being posted.

The problem seemed to originate with the tool that Facebook uses to automatically scrape pictures from links that are posted, so that they show up with a preview image. The problems initially occurred with that tool, which was stopping people from being able to edit posts that included links.

The issue has now been resolved, Facebook said, and affected posts will be gradually appearing back on the site. Facebook apologised for problems caused by the bug, which is likely to hit publishers’ traffic, much of which comes from the network.

Facebook famously prides itself on rarely going down, but has been hit by problems in 2015. The site was unavailable to some Android users in April, and in January went down for a full hour.