Facebook Problems: Evan Priestley, Former Engineer, Exposes Social Network's 'Buggiest' Software

Has Facebook developed the glitchiest software on the web? Yes, according to Evan Priestley, a former Facebook engineer.

"Facebook is the buggiest software I use regularly, by a wide margin," Priestley recently wrote on question-and-answer site Quora. TechCrunch reports the Priestly has also documented more than 30 Facebook bugs he's found since September, collecting and publishing the glitches on a Pinterest blog.

Though Priestley has made it his hobby to reveal the social network's flaws, he actually defends the snafus on Quora, writing that there's no need for the company to make higher quality software. Priestley writes that the company has paid less attention to developing software and, thus, has been able to put more energy into making the company a fun place to work and attracting new employees.

If this is Facebook's plan, it seems to be working. According to Glassdoor's Employees' Choice Awards, Facebook was rated the best tech company to work for in 2011. (Check out our slideshow featuring the highest-rated tech companies of the year.)

Another reason Priestley says it's okay for Facebook to have a few shells in the omelette has to do with the type of company it is. Because Facebook is a social network and not "banking or space shuttles or nuclear reactors," users will put up with the occasional problem. If you can't update your status for a day, or even a week, it isn't the end of the world.

Facebook may take the bugs more seriously than Priestley realizes, however. In July 2011, CNET reported that Facebook had launched a bug bounty program, promising to reward $500 to third-party "whitehat" hackers for each bug they found. In August, Facebook paid out $40,000 in bug-finding fees, reported CBS San Francisco.

A few of the issues that Priestley documents on Pinterest are duplicate notifications, broken links, rogue smart lists, grammar mixups, phantom "Like" symbol on posts that no one has liked, and more. Check out our slideshow (below) to see what these and other Facebook bugs look like. Have you noticed these or other glitches? Let us know in the comments.

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Comments

[Darren MacGeorge]

05:49 PM on 05/02/2012

Facebook does not allow us to change the hours we are open or our phone number.

[411storytime]

08:43 PM on 04/15/2012

Facebook is preventing me from sending out any source of notification or communication. It is as if I have been banned from chatting. Though I have only been a friendly online user. I am locked out from communicating and only viewing ppl talking to me for about a week now. Get this, it is happening on both of my accounts... how convienent. I recently bad mouthed FB's glitches before this happened. So tell me what is up with this? I am seriously disappointed with facebook, I can't click every link either... I can't even click the "help" link. How convenient.

[sfurr]

10:46 AM on 01/12/2012

Apparently, he's not a user of HuffPost, where if your comments aren't being deleted for no apparent reason, they're magically disappearing into the ether and every so often they roll out some flashy (well, hardly) new feature and half the content of the site is inaccessible for a couple of days or longer. So, where did those badges go exactly?

[TommoB]

06:01 PM on 01/11/2012

"Another reason Priestley says it's okay for Facebook to have a few shells in the omelette has to do with the type of company it is. Because Facebook is a social network and not 'banking or space shuttles or nuclear reactors,' users will put up with the occasional problem. If you can't update your status for a day, or even a week, it isn't the end of the world."

If some of these bugs result in exposure of private information, the gathering of lawyers may be reminiscent of a nuclear meltdown...

[sourkreme]

03:00 AM on 01/18/2012

Lawyer's like egg's come a dime a dozen. It would be tied up in court for years to come and in the end the only thing that changes is a bunch of fat cat lawyer's get rich from a company where money is plentiful and means nothing. You can't hurt companies the size of these companies, money means nothing to them. Just how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are enough for the people who own them. They pay lawyer's big bucks to make sure that their nest egg can never be touched so just what happens besides the rich get richer !

[TommoB]

07:33 PM on 01/23/2012

Where do you buy your eggs?

[Stroodle]

02:06 PM on 01/11/2012

It's a little ridiculous writing a story about what former employee says about the company. Recently on Facebook I noticed an old co-worker of mine bashing the company we previously worked together at. His position was terminated but he did move onto a better job. The company we worked for had issues and it was publicly known but this guy would keep bashing them by means of his Facebook status. I had enough and eventually commented on one asking if he was upset because they fired him. I guess he didn't like his friends that was the reason.

You can't listen to these people. He's a disgruntled employee no matter how content he seems.

You can do better than this HP.

[setdog1]

12:45 PM on 01/11/2012

facebook sucks.

[creepycake]

08:37 AM on 01/11/2012

As for "The icon indicates someone has liked this post, but when you hover over the thumbs up, it says no one has liked it. ", I have noticed it too, and from my experience so far, it happens when a person BLOCKED on my list "likes" something.

[Desolati0n]

08:01 AM on 01/11/2012

If only I had known that you could get paid for finding bugs....

[wheels7778]

03:57 AM on 01/11/2012

One major bug I recently discovered is that after I have hidden all recent story types on my profile (which can be viewed at the bottom of my timeline-free FB profile), none of my news, comments, or activity whatsoever posts to my profile, which is what I opted to do to protect my privacy as much as possible. HOWEVER, I discovered that my activity is still active and public in my friends' news feed. This is far greater than a bug. This is a shocking, unexcusable fuckup on Facebook's part. I mean, how in the world can they lead people to believe they are altering their privacy one way (by omitting content from posting to their profile), while in reality, it has absolutely no bearing on what their friends, family and coworkers see in the news feed. — Brian Wheeler

[Marc Driftmeyer]

07:57 AM on 01/11/2012

That's not a bug. That's a degree of freedom association you have with your friend who has a shared key [key/value pair RDBMS terms] to your profile which you've authorized by having them as your friend to rebroadcast on their page. You'll have to ask every single friend of yours to stop subscribing to your timeline for all but important `news' in order to reduce the traffic of your content to them.

You can also create a series of categories and group your friends in them and refine how they can access your information being presented on your timeline.

[thtech]

09:03 PM on 01/11/2012

I left facebook for reasons like this, it's like they make it intentionally difficult to control who sees what. G+ makes this so drop dead simple. I don't have to worry about what I post now, as long as my "circles" are setup correctly and I double check which circles I'm sharing stuff with everything is okay.

[andyc1110]

01:37 AM on 01/11/2012

I like this.

[am44smith]

12:25 AM on 01/11/2012

If anyone should complain about bugs, it should be all Twitter users. I've never seen a day where I didn't receive an error message on it.... It's so ridiculous I'm thinking of leaving....

[misterstudebaker]

12:12 AM on 01/11/2012

If they had a decent SQA department this article wouldn't exist.

[brandotimestwo]

12:01 AM on 01/11/2012

Thanks, Priestley, but we don't need a former Facebook employee to tell us the site has glitches. All one has to do is try to use the site, and one will figure it out fairly quickly.

[sylkol]

10:29 PM on 01/10/2012

huffington always turns any potentially anti- facebook to a positive.

[cgalaxia7]

11:43 PM on 01/10/2012

CNN (HLN) turns it into a cyber bullying network! Funny isn't it!

[Me Simple Caveman]

10:05 PM on 01/10/2012

Biggest glitch was Og Signed up.
This not progress compared to leave message on rock outside Cave.