Facebook embed issue on homepage

Anyone else seeing this when viewing the TS homepage?

(Apologies, it doesn't want to embed for some reason. Mods feel free to fix it if you can)

skyscraper said:

Anyone else seeing this when viewing the TS homepage?

(Apologies, it doesn't want to embed for some reason. Mods feel free to fix it if you can)

Click to expand...

Working fine for me on mobile, to my knowledge that error is either you or Facebook.

That's strange, it's working fine for me (desktop). Is it still broken for you?

Can anyone find the cause of the image embed issue in @skyscraper 's post, it was doing it for me the other day. No dice when you view it in the thread but if you edit/quote the post it shows fine.

I just had to accept cookies for Facebook when browsing the site and that seemed to fix the error for me! Do you have any cookie settings that you could check?

@Burbs @Sazzle There we go, it worked that time! (new screenshot as I've still got that issue)

I am also getting this issue. I'm sure it was ok this morning when I checked, but it's happening now on both my mobile phone (Firefox and Chrome) and my laptop (Firefox and Edge). I get also the issue in a private/incognito window so it doesn't look like it's cookie or session related.

I have an adblocker on my laptop Firefox (but still get the issue with it disabled), and I don't have an adblocker on Edge or my phone's browsers. There's no errors in the browser console. It's a bit of a mystery.

I'll have a bit of a dig and see if there's any obvious tells.

As the error message is being served by Facebook itself from within the embed this could be down to an error pulling data from their side, which as others have said can sometimes be affected by things like AdBockers and cookie preferences.

Facebook are currently making a lot of changes to their feed and embed services though which has caused issues with a few different services.


UPDATE

So yes, the issue does appear to be cookie related.

To resolve the issue:

1. Visit https://facebook.com and accept all cookies when the popup appears - You don't need to log in. Just accept their cookies
2. Return to https://towersstreet.com and the feed should load (refresh the page if you're not using the same tab). If it displays the error click close and the feed should appear unless you have any additional blocking software on your device. Safari users on both iOS and macOS may receive a separate system-based pop up from the browser asking you if you want to allow Facebook’s cookies when browsing TowersStreet. You’ll need to accept this too to allow the feed to read the stored cookies you got from Facebook.

You may also want to try deleting any Facebook related cookies from your device if it still doesn't work, but be aware that this may log you out of Facebook or other services using their cookies.

The specific cookie that is required for the feed to work is titled "datr". Delete this cookie and visit Facebook to accept and get a fresh version of it. The cookie has a lifespan of two years, but naturally if Facebook makes any changes to their cookies and checks you may need to repeat these steps again sooner

Rick said:

Can anyone find the cause of the image embed issue in skyscraper's post, it was doing it for me the other day. No dice when you view it in the thread but if you edit/quote the post it shows fine.

Click to expand...

I'm still looking into this one. To partly answer the question though, when you preview a post in edit or quote view the forum fetches the image via it's original URL. However, when viewed as a post it's ran through the proxy, which is why you see it in one place but not another.

Still investigating why it only seems to affect some images and posts but not others though. Were either yourself or @skyscraper using any particular devices or browsers/apps at the time you both ran into the problem?

Ian said:

I'm still looking into this one. To partly answer the question though, when you preview a post in edit or quote view the forum fetches the image via it's original URL. However, when viewed as a post it's ran through the proxy, which is why you see it in one place but not another.

Still investigating why it only seems to affect some images and posts but not others though. Were either yourself or @skyscraper using any particular devices or browsers/apps at the time you both ran into the problem?

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I'm on a desktop currently. Don't see the window on my phone as the screen cuts it off. I don't know about embedding on posts, only the one on the TS homepage.

Sorry hideously behind forum stuff this week due to real life getting in the way, tanks to Ian for looking into it and getting to the bottom of the FB issue! From an image embed point of view, I know Rick's issue has been sorted and it was due to image size.

For the images that you're posting @skyscraper, after having a look with Ian it appears to be a Discord issue. Basically the image isn't found by the image proxy plugin. I'm guessing Discord's image hosting sits on a content distribution network and for some reason images are propagating across it. I was able to replicate it where your image loaded on my connection, then connecting to a VPN and trying to view it failed. The image proxy will be hitting one of these servers where the image doesn't exist, whereas you're not. Very bizarre and random to say the least!

Craig said:

Sorry hideously behind forum stuff this week due to real life getting in the way, tanks to Ian for looking into it and getting to the bottom of the FB issue! From an image embed point of view, I know Rick's issue has been sorted and it was due to image size.

For the images that you're posting @skyscraper, after having a look with Ian it appears to be a Discord issue. Basically the image isn't found by the image proxy plugin. I'm guessing Discord's image hosting sits on a content distribution network and for some reason images are propagating across it. I was able to replicate it where your image loaded on my connection, then connecting to a VPN and trying to view it failed. The image proxy will be hitting one of these servers where the image doesn't exist, whereas you're not. Very bizarre and random to say the least!

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I'm confused, as I posted the image here to show the issue I've found on the TS homepage.
I managed to post the screenshot second time.

skyscraper said:

I'm confused, as I posted the image here to show the issue I've found on the TS homepage.
I managed to post the screenshot second time.

Click to expand...

Just explaining why the image wasn't working in your initial post is all, as others were querying it too . Facebook wise, just refer to Ian's post, seems multiple sites that use the pages plugin have the same issue at the moment.

Craig said:

Just explaining why the image wasn't working in your initial post is all, as others were querying it too . Facebook wise, just refer to Ian's post, seems multiple sites that use the pages plugin have the same issue at the moment.

Click to expand...

Ahhh I see, apologies. My bad.