Twitter and Facebook fight leads to cross-posted Tweets being deleted

Facebook and Twitter’s fight over whether tweets posted on Twitter can be automatically posted to Facebook has been rumbling on since the beginning of the year, and has now resulted in large numbers of Facebook posts made that way disappearing.

It appears that the cause of these posts disappearing is Twitter’s recent decision to delete its Facebook platform app. In January, Facebook announced it was removing a feature that allowed cross-posting from Twitter, which made Twitter’s Facebook platform app redundant.

Known as “cross-posting”, the feature allowed people to post Tweets on Twitter, which would then be automatically posted in Facebook. It meant users with both social media accounts only needed to post an update once, and it seems that Facebook saw this as preventing people from going to its website and posting the update themselves.

Missing posts

When Twitter deleted its Facebook app, it apparently didn’t realize that this would make previous posts that had been made using the app disappear.

However, as TechCrunch reports, a number of people have been complaining about their missing posts.

@facebook I used the Twitter for Facebook app for years, and I realize it’s not working and isn’t going to. But I just discovered all the Facebook updates it put have been deleted and dissappeared from my timeline! Is there a way to retrieve this?August 26, 2018

While it’s frustrating for many users, this issue also has big ramifications for businesses that relied on being able to post updates to both Twitter and Facebook.

Not only have the Facebook posts disappeared – comments on the posts have vanished as well.

So, who’s to blame? TechCrunch reports that a source with an understanding of the problem got in contact to say that Twitter’s deletion of the app was a surprise to Facebook, and that Twitter didn’t alert the company to the problem immediately.

However, the Axios website refers to another source close to Twitter who claims that Twitter had asked Facebook for more time to see if there was a way to make its app continue to work, but Facebook said no.

Regardless of who’s at fault, it appears that the deleted content is now back. If you rely on cross posting between Twitter and Facebook, however, you may need to look into other ways to maintain your presence on the feuding social networks.