Facebook pages taking a long time to open?

[GabeU]

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not really looking for help, as I don't think it's something that can be fixed, but I was just curious if others who had previously had no issues with Facebook are finding it taking much longer to open as of late.  

This started about two or three weeks ago.  Prior to that, Facebook pages would open fairly quickly.  Maybe fifteen to twenty seconds to finish opening.  Pages are now taking anywhere from one to two minutes to finish opening, and once a while a bit longer.  

My overall speeds seem to be fine, though I have been experiencing a bit more of a slowdown in the evenings.  

Again, I was just curious if this has started happening with anyone else, and I'm only speaking of what I described, not those who've had ongoing speed issues or Facebook issues.  Only those who've started experiencing slow Facebook responses within the last few weeks.  

Thanks.  

[GabeU]

How interesting.  I guess I'm in this boat alone.  

For a little over three years everything was fine.  Then, on June 4th, 2019, it all started.  The main page takes well over a minute to fully load, and any subsequent pages that are opened take equally as long to fully open.  Prior to that date it took seconds.  And other websites are still fine.  It's just Facebook.  

It doesn't make any sense, but something has definitely changed.  

[GabeU]

WOW!  

I realize that it's a holiday, meaning more people home, but here's an example, and it's not using a timing app, as I'm talking about how long it takes for the page to be fully open from the time it starts to open, not how long it takes from the time I hit enter until it finds the website and the page starts to open.  Because of this, I time it manually, as I don't know of an app to do it.  Edit:  I found "Page load time", a Chrome app.  (editing this in case people read this and want to know)

Google's main page - less than one second.

Twitter - 3 seconds.

Amazon - 22 seconds (lots of stuff on that page)

DLS Reports - 3 seconds.

Facebook - 2 minutes, 14 seconds.   

Current speed...

[maratsade]

How peculiar. Is that FB related? 

[GabeU]

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@maratsade wrote:

How peculiar. Is that FB related? 

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I'm not really sure.  I can say that, using my phone and its own service (instead of HughesNet WiFi), and with its present speed of 4.3Mbps, I was able to fully open Facebook using the Chrome mobile browser in about 20 seconds, and I hadn't gone to Facebook with my phone in well over two months, so not much of it is in the phones cache.  

Something's definitely goofy.  😞   

Edit:  I just opened Facebook Messenger directly from an email notification of a Messenger response.  It took well over a minute to finish opening once it started, and there were no pictures to load.  Messenger should open in mere seconds.  It used to.  

[maratsade]

Channeling Mark, I'm going to say it's Century Link and AWS. Or both. 

Seriously, I hope whatever it is gets resolved soon. 

[GabeU]

In case it helps...

I also did fbcdn.net, but the addresses were identical, and the results nearly identical.

[maratsade]

Could it be related to the outage that FB and others experienced? 

[MarkJFine]

They may have secure-encoded everything. Given the number of graphics and widgets on a FB page...

You can try running it through Google's analyzer: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Just copy/paste the url to your FB page in there and it should give you all the deets on what it's doing.

Edit: or maybe not... think FB can't get past the login.

[GabeU]

Oddly enough, today, almost exactly one month after this started, and it may actually be exactly one month, as I can't remember if it started on the day my bill was generated, or the day my data reset (4th and 5th, respectively), it's much faster.

I just opened a new Facebook page and it took about 15 seconds from the time it started opening until the time it finished.  That's it.  

I hope it stays this way.   

[GabeU]

Does anyone know the name of that app for Chrome that times how long it takes to get to web pages?  I want to see if that app might help.  I think I discovered it via @BirdDog, but he hasn't been on in a while, so I don't think I can ask him.

I'm going to try searching through old replies/pictures that both I and BirdDog have posted.  Maybe I'll get lucky and find it.  

Edit:  Found it!  It's called "Page load time".  It figures that the name would be that literal.  LOL.  

Also, I found out that if I press CTRL + Shift + C, then choose Network, then type the URL in the address bar and hit enter, it will time it that way.  

I'll try the app, but I'll also try the second thing, as the second one breaks down the time for every single element that loads on the page.  

[GabeU]

Okay, it may be hard to see on the upper right, but this example took 59.9 seconds.  

I've also tried Firefox and Edge, and with all extensions turned off.  It makes no difference. 

[MarkJFine]

Could be that sidebar widget with the games on it.

[maratsade]

I just tried that page and it loaded in approximately 20 seconds. 

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@GabeU wrote:

Okay, it may be hard to see on the upper right, but this example took 59.9 seconds.  

I've also tried Firefox and Edge, and with all extensions turned off.  It makes no difference.  

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[MarkJFine]

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@maratsade wrote:

I just tried that page and it loaded in approximately 20 seconds.

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Same. Betting it's the game widget. I don't have that.

[maratsade]

i don't have a FB account, so I don't know what the game widget is... I wonder, though, can it be turned off? Deleted?  

[GabeU]

I noticed that the gaming widget popped up a while ago.  There's actually two.  An instant games widget, and a "your friends play these games" widget.  After bit of fiddling I finally figured out how to turn them off.  Though I've never played a game on Facebook, I do have a couple of friends that are constantly inviting me to play them, to which I decline (you think they'd get the picture after a while), so I'm wondering if that's why they showed up.  

So, now it's on to seeing if it makes any difference.  

[GabeU]

Well, I had hope.  It's hard to see, but it's 1:40.  The picture at the top alone took nearly twenty seconds to complete opening.  😞 

[GabeU]

This is getting downright ridiculous.  200 seconds for this one.  Over three minutes.  SMH.  

For comparison, the following is a site I've either never been to, or it's been a VERY long time, as I don't remember ever being to it. I did a search for popular news sites, as I knew that they would have a lot of graphics and such.  The result was 15.1 seconds...

[C0RR0SIVE]

Gabe...  Try the following...

-Log out of Facebook
-Create new account
-Clear cache
-Log into new account
-Follow several news pages and such to generate a good feed
-Test with the new account
-Log out of new account and retest with old account

This may be something with your account specifically.

[GabeU]

I actually do have a second account, and I use Firefox for it.  I haven't signed into it in months.  I just completely cleared Firefox's cache, restarted it, then went to Facebook and signed into that alternate account.  The home page has very little on it, but it still took a while to load.  I then went to the HughesNet page.  It took nearly three and half minutes for it to finish opening.  😞  

I'm going to break out my laptop and see what happens when using it.