Some of the world’s biggest apps – including Tinder, TikTok, and Spotify – faced problems loading on iOS devices yesterday (May 6) because of a problem with the Facebook SDK.
As first reported by Downdetector, the issues began at around 6.30 PM ET, and lasted for several hours, with major apps including GrubHub and Pinterest also plagued with the issue.
The issue was caused by a problem with Facebook’s software development kit (SDK) tool, which many apps use to offer a Sign In With Facebook option.
Following the downtime, developers tool to GitHub to share their concerns reporting crashes and discussing the potential of a fix from Facebook. It was interesting to note, only iOS devices were affected.
Since then, Facebook has patched the issue with its SDK, releasing a statement: “Earlier today, a new release of Facebook included a change that triggered crashes for some users in some apps using the Facebook iOS SDK.
“We identified the issue quickly and resolved it. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
According to one report from The Verge, the company had disabled a server configuration update which caused the SDK to crash. To resolve this, the company reverted a server-side change, and as a result, the most popular apps on the App Store returned to normal.
9to5Mac’s Guilherme Rambo shared his thoughts on the situation as the story unfolded, and suggested that it was time for Apple to intervene to ensure SDKs and other third-party tools do not affect the performance or potential downtime of apps on the App Store.
“If I were Apple, I would be working hard on finding a way to “sandbox” these types of SDKs from the main app binary,” he said, “to prevent issues like this (and leakage of user data to third-parties).”
“This would prevent ridiculous things like this from happening: even if you don’t use Facebook features in an app at all, you’re prevented from using the app because Facebook f’ed up!”
Did you suffer any downtime yesterday? Let us know your story on social media and check back soon for more App Store news and updates, as and when we get them.
