World Table Responds to Facebook's Latest Failure - No longer supporting iOS & Safari in Commenting Plugin

Tech Giant No Longer Supports Its Own Comment System - Leaving Publishers Flummoxed

News provided by

Apr 24, 2019, 15:22 ET

PROVO, Utah, April 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- When alerted to a bug preventing iOS and Safari users from using their comment plugin, Facebook simply stated they will not be releasing a fix.

"This is a remarkable decision considering nearly half of online newspapers use Facebook for commenting," said Bryan Hall, CEO of World Table.

Facebook has recently stopped supporting iOS and Safari in their popular commenting plugin - effectively silencing almost 50% of publisher's audiences.

The bug was first reported on Facebook's developer page on March 22, 2019. On April 4, a Facebook team member wrote "Unfortunately, our team will not be releasing a fix for this behavior," then "closed" the support ticket.

Responses ranged from shock to outrage. "You can't be serious…," wrote David Dierker, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "You're just going to drop support for all iOS browsers on iPhone and iPad?"

TownNews Recommends World Table
Christine Masters, Director of Product at TownNews — the largest CMS platform for newspapers — confirmed the issue on their public forum at TownNews.com, and acknowledged that Facebook fully understands, "that this basically means the plugin doesn't work on half of all pages."

Masters stated that around 45% of TownNews traffic is from iOS and continued, suggesting that even before this issue, "we've seen a trend among our customers to move off of Facebook commenting in recent years, given the often-frustrating relationship between Facebook and the newspaper industry."

"To our delight, Christine specifically recommended World Table as she laid out the four options for commenting on the TownNews platform," said Hall.

"This is great timing for us," Hall continued. "While Facebook is signaling its intentions to move away from newspapers, the World Table's whole mission is focused on supporting them." Two recently published case studies show how World Table is paying off in major ways for news publishers.

World Table, a Utah-based company, is a registered Delaware Public Benefit Corporation with a mission focused on supporting journalism.

It seems to be paying off. The Salt Lake Tribune recently invited Hall to join them in a Silicon Slopes Town Hall meeting to discuss how they are "Improving Online Comments" using World Table's innovative solutions (see video).

About World Table PBC:
World Table makes online engagement tools for publishers, editors, and journalists.

For Additional details see full release.

Contact: Jack Donaldson: [email protected]

SOURCE World Table PBC