Facebook Messenger Bug is Resurrecting Years-Old Message Threads

• Facebook users have been reporting years-old conversation threads resurfacing without any user action.
• The company revealed that a bug caused the messages to be treated as new, causing them to pop up once again.
• The issue has already been fixed, and users should not experience it anymore.

A number of Facebook users were left confused after they saw old message threads re-appearing as 'new.' Users moved to social media and complained about the issue, and it seems like both the Messenger app and the desktop Messenger website were affected.

Facebook quickly responded to the issue and fixed it. A spokesperson responded stating that “Some people are seeing older messages on Facebook.com. We are aware of the issue and are actively working to resolve it in as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

I am not sure what is happening with Facebook and old messages popping up as new ones, but it gets really ridiculous being confronted with some of the chats from couple of years ago.

— Ilija (@ilijajerkovic) November 26, 2018

Many users who were affected by the bug were concerned that the bug could resurface past memories they would rather not be reminded of. Unless a user actively deleted old conversations they do not want to resurface, Facebook keeps a record of all of your past interactions that can go as far back as 2004, when the website first launched for Harvard students.

Thank you @facebook for sending me notifications of messages sent over a year old. Many were from the day my partner, Dean, passed away & now I've spent my evening in fear of what else I'm going to see.

— Adam (@adamadzp) November 26, 2018

This is not the first time such an issue has occurred. Facebook’s introduction of the On This Day feature caused a lot of users to be left less than happy. The algorithm was nowhere near perfect and resurrected unpleasant memories as well. The social media company has improved its algorithm since then, and such issues are not prevalent anymore.

However, unlike the last time, old messages popping up was caused by a bug instead of strategic failure on Facebook’s part. Facebook released an update after fixing the issue stating that it was caused due to faulty software updates to Messenger and they have been resolved. Aside from the one-off bug that affected users, the platform is relatively bug-free and such issues rarely ever happen. Restarting your Messenger app or refreshing the website should remove all old threads marked as new.

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