Is Facebook adding Gen Z phrases to your shared posts? You're not alone, bestie. Here's what's happening.

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• A strange Facebook glitch is adding words to shared posts.
• The added phrases are often Gen Z slang.
• Meta says it is investigating.

Have you seen Facebook add text that you didn’t write to a shared post? You’re not alone, as a strange glitch has popped up.

Several weeks ago, Facebook users started reporting that when they shared a post, it would appear with extra words, as if the poster added them. What’s most odd is that the added text is often Gen Z slang. I’ve seen examples like, “Massive W,” “We are totally feasting, bestie,” “That design is so cooked!” and “Views are fire!”. 

These phrases appear on posts where the text doesn’t even make sense — and from posters who are decidedly not Gen Z.

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I haven’t seen an example of glitch text overwriting text, so it only seems to show up if you share with no comment of your own.

I first noticed the issue when a friend shared a marketplace listing for a camera. The post was shared, but it appeared with additional text: “We truly are living in the year 3000.” I thought the extra part was strange, but figured it was my friend complimenting the camera somehow. Shortly after, though, he followed with a post asking why text appeared that he hadn’t written.

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I’m a reasonably tech-savvy person, but I didn’t have an answer, so I searched for an explanation to give him. I didn’t find a potential cause, but I did find this is apparently a widespread issue over the past few weeks. I found multiple Reddit posts, a Facebook post from a Georgia news anchor, and plenty of other social media comments complaining about the added Gen Z flair.

What’s causing the Facebook Gen Z glitch?

I reached out to Meta to ask about what’s going on, and I got this response from a spokesperson: “We recently ran a small experiment that suggested pre-generated text captions for posts being reshared on Facebook. This test has concluded.” It’s not clear if these phrases were showing up in drafts when being shared, users just didn’t see them until after the fact (that seems to be what Meta is saying, I’ve reached out again to clarify) or why much of the suggested text was Gen Z slang.

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Meta said the test that caused these suggestions is over. You can go back and manually delete the text if you see it show up, so the best thing to do is to check your profile after you share something.