Facebook issue on 2012 Mac Mini

My dad has a 2012 Mac Mini (Catalina, current) that he’s still using just fine, but it’s having a challenge with Facebook. I’ve confirmed that my 2012 Mini has the same issue. He’ll go to a page with an embedded video, and he’ll get the error message:

“There was a problem with this request. We’re working on getting it fixed as soon as we can.”

from Facebook. Consistently. In all browsers on the computer, including Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. And my 2012 Mini (Catalina, current) does the same. My 2018 Mini works great.

Obviously that’s just a generic Facebook message, but the fact that it’s in all browsers on the computer, on two different Mac Minis, makes me wonder if there might be something with root certificates or the OS that just isn’t playing nice - and could maybe be fixed. :slight_smile:

I can’t imagine there’s something specific to the hardware that would cause a problem, is there?

My thought is some sort of video codec issue.

That’s an interesting idea. Now I’m wondering why two 2012 Minis would be missing (or have defective) codecs, whereas a 2018 would be fine.

Maybe something in Catalina that fires differently when it has the 2018 hardware available?

This is a total stab in the dark, but… he doesn’t still have Flash installed, does he? I was just hypothetizing that if the browsers saw that Flash was installed, maybe they were trying to use it?

Seems extremely unlikely (especially if multiple browsers are seeing the same issue) but stranger things have happened, so I figured it didn’t hurt to ask.

Well, it happens on my 2012 Mini too, and I don’t think I have Flash installed - but I can double-check.

Other than looking for an actual Flash app, do you know if this is the sort of thing that there’d be additional digging to uncover?

Any ad blockers installed on the 2012s but not the 2018?

See if there is an app in /Applications/Utilities/ called something like “Flash Player Manager”.

If there is, launching it should give the option to uninstall.

Nope, don’t see it. So it’s probably not installed. Worth the check, though. :slight_smile: Thanks!

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