I have been a Facebook user since 2010. I was there when the deep magic was written, and someone posting on your wall gave you a hit of dopamine that no Instagram ‘like’ could even begin to understand.
But sadly, we all know the history of Facebook, how it degenerated into a place for selling second-hand junk and seeing how racist your friends and family can be.
Before the degeneration of the world’s biggest social media platform, I used Facebook not only for Facebook, but for Messenger, Instagram, and logging into myriad other apps like Spotify, Soundcloud and Uber.
Using Facebook to log in was due to pure laziness and to save myself from learning a billion new passwords.
But my laziness has caught up with me. It seems that I can no longer log into my Facebook—and not for lack of trying, that’s for sure.
And it’s not because I’ve forgotten the password! There seems to be a small bug that’s causing a major effing problem.
What the Zuck?
Before I go into my tirade, I would like to point out that I’m currently logged into Facebook and Messenger on my phone. This is the only way I can access my account right now.
To better explain the situation, I tried to log into Facebook a few months ago on my work computer and it naturally asked for my Authenticator code. I opened up the Authenticator app and popped in the code but a big old “this code doesn’t work” appeared.
The dreaded red text. I tried the same code, ensuring I didn’t make a typo, and still, the same message appeared.
On the desktop site, you can ask for an alternative way to log in, so I asked to authenticate on my iPhone app. But no notification appeared.
Asking me for 2FA and then not being able to use the 2FA code makes me want to yell a certain F word (it’s not Facebook I’ll tell you that much). Also, in the image above, it’s asking me for the authentication code but then says the code doesn’t match the one sent to your phone. So which one is it? An SMS or an authentication code?
This has been going on for months, and nothing has changed.
I do not know if it is Facebook, the authenticator app or a combination of both, but I am frustrated with this entire situation.
And before you ask, yes, I have submitted this issue to Facebook many, many times and heard nothing back.
I also just tried to contact Facebook about this issue, but you need to log in using the desktop app. Except I can’t do that. That’s my problem.
@facebook my 2 form login authorization keeps giving me an error not allowing me to log in via desktop. Is this a known issue?
— Justin Wolfson (@Justinwolfsonn) April 16, 2024
It’s also not just me having this small login debacle, others on the internet have trouble logging into their accounts (see above) and some of my mates have had to create an entirely new Facebook account because Meta wasn’t helping them in the slightest.
Another friend has the same problem, but her Facebook account was under a pseudonym and even submitting a passport photo couldn’t help her access her account. So she had to resort to making a new account. She said to me “I see my old account in the group chats and she stares at me haunting me.” Yikes.
A small relief
To try and take control of this very vexing situation, I decided to find ways to log into my Facebook-linked accounts that weren’t Facebook.
Thankfully, I was able to unlink Facebook from Uber, Spotify and Soundcloud. All of them now require an email or phone number login and a password. No Facebook access is needed.
I also can log into Instagram and WhatsApp with 2FA that’s a text message code, so at least I can get into some Meta-owned platforms.
Bigger than a login
This is not even about me and my personal, selfish needs. Other users are experiencing this problem.
Facebook has become such a big part of our online personas that I had to spend the better part of a day creating new logins for other accounts to make sure I don’t get locked out of them. If I’m having to do this, you can bet your bottom dollar that others are too.
While not many people use Facebook anymore for what it is intended for some of us still use it for logins and for its sister apps. It goes to show that one login snafu can cripple one person’s online presence.
So all I ask is Facebook to please fix this login issue ASAP.