Sharing a Youtube Video on Facebook Gives No Meta, Only CAPTCHA Thumbnail
If you’ve seen this, you are probably seeing it on multiple videos. Some work, some don’t, and there really isn’t much rhyme or reason to it.
From what I’ve read, Youtube has reduced their bandwidth to prevent spammers, so when Facebook attempts to retrieve the meta information from the video you are attempting to share, Youtube will occasionally treat this like spam and put a CAPTCHA in place as a security measure. Whew.
Fixing Youtube Video Shares on Facebook to Include Thumbnail, No CAPTCHA
There’s a pretty healthy thread on the Youtube Help Forums here. That is where I discovered the quick fix, thanks to a user named “Slyxiot.” He’s a level 1 user, so I’m guessing he just registered simply to post. Whoever you are, it’s greatly appreciated.
Here’s how we do it:
Go to the Facebook Debugger Page on Facebook Developers
The link is http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Enter the URL, let it debug (you’ll probably see some errors) and it will output a few different URLs.
Take the RAW Final URL from Facebook
Under the heading “Raw Open Graph Document Information”, you want to copy the “Final URL.” It’s actually identical to the URL you entered (most cases), but it’s been processed through Facebook and meta tag errors and so forth have been identified.
Share the Youtube Video on Facebook
Go back over to your Facebook page, drop in the new “Raw URL”, and voila! Facebook should now be able to take the meta information and thumbnail provided by Youtube and share it properly.
Happy Coding!
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Perhaps this post can help for readers who are having trouble showing the Youtube thumbnail on Facebook share: