Any facebook page experts here? Weird things going on I don't understand

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Tomahawk66

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#269997 19-Apr-2020 09:28

Hi All,

Firstly, in case it is important, I use a desktop computer only to access Facebook. I posted to a FB page yesterday with a short note and some photos. A message came back saying the people who moderate the page will check the content...... all good.

Hours later I check and can't see anything.... oh well.

This morning I log into my facebook account and see a notification that a friend has liked the post and photos I sent to the said page yesterday. I click on the link from the notification bell and am taken to the page where it seems my post has been put up on the page. The settings I see are public. It is a public page about Covid-19.

BUT, when I exit that page and go to my normal timeline view or go to the page in question specifically and search for my post or my photos, nothing is there at all. Nothing. I've had someone else look using a desktop and sure enough nothing is there at all. My friend who did see it uses a mobile phone to access FB and thinks she saw the post in her normal news feed.

I'm just wondering how FB pages work? How can the link show my post as being published but going to the page itself independently shows it has not been published? If it was published accidentally and has now been taken down, wouldn't the link not work? Or is the issue something to do with me only using a desktop computer? A few years ago there was a major hick up for people using desktops only trying to post to pages.

Thanks for any help or information :-)

jamesrt

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#2465224 19-Apr-2020 09:57

At a high level, Facebook runs on a massively distributed system, which means that various parts of that system aren't necessarily "in sync" with each other. Both their front-end servers and their back-end databases will be separate; and have many, many, instance(s) - data replication between instances may take some time and/or get stuck for various reasons.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Facebook had different servers behind the scenes that handled mobile pages than those that handle desktop pages - the workloads are probably quite different in many ways (for example, on a mobile device, a lot of the work in displaying the page may be handled by the app; whereas for a desktop browser, the server itself may need to do more work).

Therefore, it's not uncommon for different people to see different displays of data; I've had situations where I could see a post and my wife couldn't - presumably because the post information had yet to be replicated from the database "my servers" were accessing to the database "her servers" were connected to.

It having been "hours" and the data still hasn't synced would be unusual; but not beyond the realms of possibility.

(Not really a FB expert; but I do work in large IT systems)

Tomahawk66

181 posts

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+1 received by user: 13

#2465244 19-Apr-2020 10:10

jamesrt:

At a high level, Facebook runs on a massively distributed system, which means that various parts of that system aren't necessarily "in sync" with each other. Both their front-end servers and their back-end databases will be separate; and have many, many, instance(s) - data replication between instances may take some time and/or get stuck for various reasons.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Facebook had different servers behind the scenes that handled mobile pages than those that handle desktop pages - the workloads are probably quite different in many ways (for example, on a mobile device, a lot of the work in displaying the page may be handled by the app; whereas for a desktop browser, the server itself may need to do more work).

Therefore, it's not uncommon for different people to see different displays of data; I've had situations where I could see a post and my wife couldn't - presumably because the post information had yet to be replicated from the database "my servers" were accessing to the database "her servers" were connected to.

It having been "hours" and the data still hasn't synced would be unusual; but not beyond the realms of possibility.

(Not really a FB expert; but I do work in large IT systems)

Thank you so much for your reply Jamesrt :-) That makes a lot of sense to me. Most of my friends use FB via mobile phones yet only one appears to have seen the post I did. Here is the link I get when I click on the notification button and that takes me to the published post that doesn't actually seem to be published.... (NB there are not meant to be 5 photos, only one, but FB was playing up when I was trying to upload the photo).

https://www.facebook.com/UniteAgainstCovid19/posts/136104591362314?notif_id=1587195571019867&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic

mudguard

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#2465327 19-Apr-2020 11:22

Yeah this seems to be an annoying aspect of Facebook. I tend to only use it on the desktop as the search function (within groups) is easier to use. Often someone will say, oh did you see this, and in theory I should be able, but I can never find it.

Tomahawk66

181 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 13

#2465533 19-Apr-2020 17:42

mudguard:

Yeah this seems to be an annoying aspect of Facebook. I tend to only use it on the desktop as the search function (within groups) is easier to use. Often someone will say, oh did you see this, and in theory I should be able, but I can never find it.

I don't have a smart phone so have to use a desk top computer for everything. It's crazy infuriating that the mobile platform works differently to the desktop platform. Pretty much means I am possibly wasting my time posting things now, if no one will ever see them. :-(