Update (10:08 AM, 27 November 2018): A Facebook spokesperson told TNW it’s fixed the bug:
Earlier today, some people may have experienced Facebook resending older messages. The issue, caused by software updates, has been fully resolved. We’re sorry for any inconvenience.
Our original story follows.
Facebook’s Messenger service is acting up in the weirdest way for some users: it’s resurfacing conversations from the past automatically, with some chat threads dating back years, reports The Verge.
The bug causes old conversations to show up in the Messenger tab on Facebook’s site, and they look just like new unread chats. The company told The Verge that it’s looking into resolving the issue as soon as possible.
Facebook better hurry before it spooks or upsets users: one person who complained about the bug on Twitter noted that the resurfaced messages were from their partner, who’d passed away some time ago.
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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
Hopefully, the social network will be able to fix what looks like a minor bug before it affects many more people. We’ve contacted Facebook to learn more and will update this post if there’s a response.
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