Flash update has caused problem to videos on Facebook

Question

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016)macOS Mojave 10.14.2Safari version 12.0.2 (14606.3.4)Flash version 32.0.0.114Updated flash when it came out and ever since all a majority of videos on FB do not work right. Some won't start at all, some will only play about 5 seconds of video (and the progress bar shows only 5 seconds of material when the videos are much longer in reality), some will be all choppy and won't play right, and some won't have any sound at all. I've done a clean install a number of times now and it's the same thing. I can't figure out how to revert to the previous version or how to fix this. I've logged into my facebook account on same computer using Chrome and none of this happens in Facebook, so it's 100% whatever Flash update did to the browser.

jeromiec83223024 · Answer

My guess is that this is probably a transient network issue, but if the problem still persists, it's probably not actually Flash.

"When in doubt, reboot" is still sage advice, and the first place I'd start. If you're on a WiFi connection and the problem persists, I'd check a hardwired ethernet connection as a second step.

If neither of those things resolves the issue and you want to rule out Flash Player definitively (there's no magic path whereby Flash Player breaks native HTML5 video playback as a side-effect of merely existing on the system), then uninstall it and see if the problem goes away.

Uninstall Flash Player - Mac:

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-mac-os.html

If that doesn't work, you could check to see if the problem is isolated to a particular browser's native video implementation by trying the same thing in other browsers.

If you're still getting problematic video playback, it's most likely either traffic congestion on the route between you and the node on Facebook's Content Delivery Network that's sending you the video, or it's a technical problem in Facebook's video delivery stack.

You could probably figure that out in a fairly reasonable way by testing video playback across a number of disparate services that use HTML5 video as their conduit for video delivery (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch).

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