News: Facebook Bug on News Feed Causes Confusion

“This group is scheduled to be archived” – Did this message pop on top of your news feed too? A bug caused this message to be seen in a certain percentage of Facebook users’ news feeds. There is nothing to worry about, your Facebook pages are safe. The alert was for old groups set up before October 2010. Facebook is upgrading them to the new format, and it shouldn’t have appeared on the news feed.

Update: Facebook quickly took charge of the problem and solved it in few short minutes. They said “sorry for the confusion”, and also agreed that it was a bug which caused it and has been now removed from the homepage.

Facebook groups are like forums that Facebook users have access to view and display certain content. It’s one of the earliest features of Facebook. Facebook relaunched “groups” in October 2010  and collaborated them as spaces that notified users of new posts. There were however groups that were formed before October 2010, and these were all old legacy groups.

To find a solution to this problem, Facebook thought of converting the legacy groups into the new format.  In order to protect users from being spammed with notifications by other group members, the group to be archived would transfer all the content but not the members. To notify and help users with the new changed format, Facebook began showing this message on top of all old groups. Due to some confusion, this message began to be displayed on top of news feed instead.

These type of unintended consequences bring out the other side of Facebook. While it allows Facebook to make alterations quickly it also has certain unintended consequences that can cause a great deal of confusion.