Facebook Error Takes Down Countless Major Websites

CNN, BuzzFeed, The Washington Post, Gawker and others were all effectively taken offline on Thursday evening.

Numerous major websites, including BuzzFeed, were temporarily afflicted with what appeared to be a Facebook bug: After visting a page for a few seconds, users were redirected to a broken Facebook page. The issue seems to have been resolved, but not before causing widespread confusion online:

Fresh Aesthetics @freshaesthetics

Is it just me or does every website that has a Facebook like button redirect me to Facebook - this is what I'm seeing fb.me/1VC6vpaFu

12:26 AM - 8 Feb 13

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Maarten Goldstein @maarten_g

Hey Facebook, feel free to not redirect me away from any webpage that I'm trying to read to display an error. Thanks. pic.twitter.com/EIvIuGym

12:27 AM - 8 Feb 13

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Stephen Hui @stephenhui Follow

So, #Facebook can just redirect the entire web to its website. That's awesome.

12:43 AM - 8 Feb 13

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CNN, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Slate, BuzzFeed, Gawker and Kickstarter, among many others, were hit — the common trait on all these pages seems to be a certain kind of Facebook “Like” button, suggesting a problem with Facebook Connect. One exception, however, is the Tumblr settings page, which redirected to the same broken Facebook page but has no such like button.

The bug did not reach people without Facebook accounts, or who were logged out of Facebook. The issue does not affect logged-out users.

Facebook has not yet returned BuzzFeed’s request for comment.

Facebook has responded:

For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people logging in with Facebook from third party sites to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved, and Login with Facebook is now working as usual.