756207 - Facebook's external link redirector frequently fails with "Sorry, something went wrong. Try again"

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

Tap on an external link from the Facebook app and open it in Firefox (Beta for me at the moment, but it happened with Aurora and Nightly too). Sometimes it'll work, but often the mobile Facebook site appears with an error message: "Sorry, something went wrong. Try again". When you tap on "Try again", you get the same screen again.

Even if intermittent, this makes Firefox pretty useless for opening links from Facebook and I imagine for many users (myself included) a pretty useless browser for their phone. Similarly to bug 735115, I bet the bug isn't ours, but it makes us look bad.

Comment 1

[Kev Needham [:kev]]

Hey Phillipp,

I've seen this as well, but not in the most recent version of the FB app. Can you add version info for the FB app, and if there's any replicable case that'll help loads.

Comment 2

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

(In reply to Kev [:kev] Needham from comment #1)
> I've seen this as well, but not in the most recent version of the FB app.
> Can you add version info for the FB app, and if there's any replicable case
> that'll help loads.

I'm using version 1.9.3 of the app which seems to be the latest one. As for replicable cases, it seems the issue is intermittent in the sense that it doesn't happen on all days all the time, but when it happens it's pretty much always reproducible with any link.

It's most likely a server issue on Facebook's side. The symptoms at least fit.

Comment 3

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

I'm now seeing this with the Android stock browser, too, which means it's 100% a Facebook bug. I'll follow up with them. Sorry for the noise...