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Facebook Briefly Removed Cross Posted Tweets, Says Deleted Twitter App for Facebook Responsible

Facebook Briefly Removed Cross-Posted Tweets, Says Deleted Twitter App for Facebook Responsible

By Tasneem Akolawala | Updated: 29 August 2018 11:31 IST

A Facebook API change had caused the deletion of all cross-posted tweets.

Highlights

Facebook had deleted all cross-posted tweets
However, this was just a temporary bug that has now been fixed
Users can again see their tweets on Facebook

Facebook removed all cross-posted tweets from its site, before restoring them. All the tweets that users had shared on Facebook, with the cross-posting option, were no longer showing up in memories, and the comments and likes associated with that post had disappeared. Facebook was quick to acknowledge the issue, and said that it was investigating the matter. However, a few hours later, users started reporting that those deleted tweets were back on Facebook.

TechCrunch was the first to report on this issue, and Facebook confirmed to the publication that it is investigating the matter. Given the nature of the problem, it wasn't really noticed by many users. Tweets that were cross-posted earlier are often forgotten, and even if they didn't show up in memories any more, users seldom ever realised it. However, some users who regularly cross-posted did noticed the missing tweets. The removal was originally thought to be related to the Facebook API change that stopped users from cross-posting tweets on social network - something that happened earlier this month - but it shouldn't have affected earlier posts.

In a statement to Axios, Facebook cleared up the confusion regarding what happened. It turns out that following the change in Facebook API that prevented cross-posting of tweets, Twitter asked for its Facebook app to be deleted. This is said to be the cause of the removal of previous cross-posted tweets.

"A Twitter admin requested their app be deleted, which resulted in content that people had cross-posted from Twitter to Facebook also being temporarily removed from people’s profiles," Facebook told Axios, "However, we have since restored the past content and it's now live on people’s profiles."

Users on Twitter are also confirming that the tweets are reflecting on Facebook once again. The cross-posting option allowed users to publish whatever they tweeted, as a post of Facebook as well. The TechCrunch report notes that users who realised this bug were very heavy Twitter users, and relied heavily on cross-posting to keep their Facebook accounts active. Because of this bug, their Facebook profiles looked relatively empty, making them aware of a possible issue.

Did your cross-posted tweets get temporarily deleted as well? Let us know in the comments section below.

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