Facebook Breaks The Web: Error With Widgets Causes Sites To Disappear

Tried to reach one of your favorite websites recently only to get a mysterious Facebook error showing up? It looks like Facebook widgets are to blame.

We just had this happen to our sites, and there are widespread reports that other sites are having the same issue:

Sites such as CNN, the Huffington Post and Slate were just some of the many hit.

If you’re logged into Facebook, and you go to a site using Facebook Like or Share buttons, there’s a chance you’ll see this rather than the page you wanted:

The solution is to log-out of Facebook. If you do that, you should be able to access the site you wanted.

If you’re a publisher, the solution is to disable your Facebook widgets, until the problem is solved. When will that be? We have a question out to Facebook and will let you know, when we hear.

Postscript: After about 15-20 minutes, this was fixed. Facebook also gave us this statement:

For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people from third party sites with Facebook Login to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved.