Why won't Flash videos play in Facebook?

Question

I can't seem to get Flash videos to play in Facebook. I hear sound, but just get a blank black screen where I would expect to see the video. Youtube videos work fine.

If I browse to http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html I see the following:

"Check if Flash Player is installed on your computer", it shows the following under Step 1:

Congratulations, your computer has the latest Flash Player installed.

Start playing games, listening to music, and watching videos!

YOUR SYSTEM INFORMATION

Your Flash Version	12.0.0.44
Your browser name	Internet Explorer (I'm using IE 11)
Your Operating System (OS)	Windows (Windows 7) (I have a 64bit OS)

I followed Stpes 2, 3, and 4, and even see the Flash video of a swaying tree on the page under Step 5, which makes me thing Flash is correctly installed yet I'm still unable to get videos to play on Facebook.

Troubleshooting steps I've taken:

- Deleted %apphost%\flash and %apphost%\macromedia folders from my system

- Uninstall/reinstall Adobe Flash

- Reset Internet Explorer setting to default settings, cleared browsing history, and deleted temporary internet files

- Confirmed under "Manage Add-Ons" that "Shockwave Flash Object" is enabled

- Ensure clean Host and LMHost files

I'd greatly appreciate other troubleshooting suggestions anyone else can provide. Thank you.

C_F_McBlob · Answer

The problem is... not Flash Player.... it's Ie 11.

Microsoft intentionally screwed up the "User-Agent Strings" that websites use to identify the browser and provide the proper content for it. If a website can ID it at all, it misidentifies it as either Gecko (Firefox) or Webkit (Safari), but since the full browser engine isnt there, IE then becomes an unidentifiable visitor.

The pages can't recognize the browser, so they don't recognize any of the plugins, like Flash Player. So far, Microsoft has made NO indication that they have any plan to fix it soon.

Microsoft's recommendation is to use Compatibility View for affected pages, and "pretend" you're using an different browser. Trouble with that is it has seen limited success at best, and you have to individually enable it for EVERY page that has problems.

I'm not big on "pretending" so I recommend actually using another browser.

Firefox (from Mozilla)

Opera (from Opera)

Safari (from Apple)

Chrome (from Google)

ANY of those will work where IE11 won't, with the Flash Player Plug-in (For all other browsers), and Chrome doesn't even need that because it has its own Flash Player plugin built in.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded