An issue with Facebook SDK, which lasted for about 3 hours, crashed iOS apps for TikTok, Spotify, Tinder, Pinterest, and others which use Facebook Login
The issue has now been resolved and apps are working once more — A number of popular apps and services including Spotify, Pinterest …
The Verge James Vincent
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second time in two months a Facebook SDK bug has taken down third-party iOS apps at scale: in May, the same failure mode hit TikTok and Venmo, prompting calls for Apple to sandbox third-party SDKs from an app's own code. The July recurrence lands on apps that lean hardest on Facebook as their identity layer — Tinder has been here before, when Facebook's privacy changes broke logins back in 2018.
First-order effects
- TikTok, Spotify, Tinder, Pinterest, and other Facebook Login-dependent apps were unlaunchable on iOS for about three hours, with each absorbing user complaints and app-store review pressure for an outage rooted in someone else's code.
Second-order effects
- App makers now face a concrete build-vs-borrow question on authentication: every additional Facebook dependency widens the blast radius of Facebook's next bad deploy, strengthening the case Apple heard in May for sandboxing embedded SDKs.
Third-order effects
- Repeated single-point failures point toward platform owners tightening how third-party SDKs run inside apps — and toward large consumer apps diversifying login providers so one company's server mistake cannot brick their iOS experience.
The trend: Shared cloud dependencies are turning individual platform outages into ecosystem-wide events, pushing OS vendors and app developers to isolate and de-duplicate critical components like login.
Related: Context Portability · Facebook SDK · May 2020 Facebook SDK crash · Facebook resolves major Instagram, WhatsApp outage
Related Coverage
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Discussion
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@spotifystatus
Spotify Status
on x
Something's out of tune. We're currently investigating, and we'll keep you posted here!
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@johnsundell
John Sundell
on x
Facebook's SDK is once again causing numerous iOS apps to crash on launch. If you're still voluntarily putting code from a company that “moves fast and breaks things” into your app, then I would seriously consider not doing that 🙂 https://github.com/...
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@tomwarren
Tom Warren
on x
Lots of popular iOS apps like Spotify, Pinterest, and Tinder are crashing on iPhones today because of a Facebook iOS SDK issue. This is the second time this has happened in recent weeks https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
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@firt
Maximiliano Firtman
on x
Fact check: the native AppStore space is not safer than the Web https://twitter.com/...
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@dcseifert
Dan Seifert
on x
the cute answer everyone thinks is “derp delete Facebook” but nope, that doesn't solve this problem. it doesn't matter if you don't use facebook, plenty of your favorite apps use its SDK, as outlined in @nickstatt's report from the last time this happened: https://www.theverge.co…
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@mattk
Matt
on x
Simple fix: don't use Facebook login. I never have, and never will. https://twitter.com/...
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@shonaghosh
Shona Ghosh
on x
Filtering out traffic to Facebook servers seems to result in at least Spotify working again - so try switching off WiFi + switch on airplane mode and relaunching. https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
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@pitts_man
Pitts
on x
Isn't this the second time this has happened? At some point it's a problem for Apple as well. They need to undo this dependency in major apps. https://twitter.com/...
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@rauschma
Axel Rauschmayer
on x
At the moment, Spotify does crash for me. Surprised that they use Facebook's APIs. https://twitter.com/...
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@counternotions
Kontra
on x
Satan is giggling at this very moment, but keep on selling out your users to Facebook. https://twitter.com/...
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@delrey
Jason Del Rey
on x
And Waze! I actually had to use google maps this morning https://twitter.com/...
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@alexia
Alexia Bonatsos
on x
I love Techmeme. My apps were crashing and I had no idea why (did I do something?). Hit https://techmeme.com/ and now I know it's not. my. fault. https://www.techmeme.com/...
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@shonaghosh
Shona Ghosh
on x
Facebook confirms its SDK is causing apps to crash: “We're aware that some applications are currently affected by an issue in our Facebook iOS SDK. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”