About the Weird Codes that Appear When You Dictate Something on Facebook from Your iPhone

About the Weird Codes that Appear When You Dictate Something on Facebook from Your iPhone
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In the past few weeks some people who have upgraded to iOS 13.1.2 have noticed that when they post something to Facebook which was dictated on their iPhone, these weird little codes or artifacts show up at the beginning or end, or even in the middle, of their comment or Facebook post. We believe we have figured out what’s going on with these objects, and also what to do about it.

Weird Objects in Facebook Posts and Comments
iphone facebook weird code object in text

It’s no coincidence that we refer to these odd elements as objects, because we believe that what they are is, in fact, artifacts of an object which is invoked when you dictate something on your iPhone that is then posted to Facebook.

Now, we are not programmers, so this is just a guess, but we believe it to be a pretty good guess, particularly as that symbol, or whatever you want to call it, that is mixed in among your text on Facebook is, in fact, a box with the lettering OBJ, for object.

facebook dictation artifact obj object

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What’s more, we have determined that:

1. The box with the OBJ in it only shows up on Facebook in posts or comments that have been dictated from an iPhone, and

2. Only when that iPhone is running iOS version 13.1.2, and

3. The box is visible to readers of the post or comment if those readers are using a browser, or are on an Android device, and

4. The box with the OBJ in it is not visible to iPhone users using the Facebook app, so that user may have no idea that others are seeing that weird code in the user’s Facebook posts and comments.

As a result, we believe that these foreign objects embedded within the text of Facebook posts and comments, dictated on iPhones running iOS 13.1.2, are an issue between the Apple SFSpeechRecognizer object, and Facebook. What exactly is the issue, we cannot say, but we believe this is likely what is causing the issue.

What to Do About It

We also believe, although based on limited data, that the forthcoming iOS update, 13.1.3, will fix the issue, even though it is is not mentioned in the ‘About this Update’ section.

iOS 13.1.3 About this Update
ios 13.1.3 about this update

However, the iOS 13.1.3 update is not yet available to everybody. In the meantime, you can avoid this by not dictating posts and comments on Facebook from your iPhone. Dictation on a laptop does not seem to cause this, nor does typing on Facebook from your iPhone. It’s strictly – as best as we can tell – an issue between an iPhone running 13.1.2 and Facebook.

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9 thoughts on “About the Weird Codes that Appear When You Dictate Something on Facebook from Your iPhone

  1. It’s not just Facebook. Apparently IOS dictation puts that obj box at the end of dictated texts in Discord as well as WordPress also.

  2. Also happens on Windows laptop running Dragon dictation software, so it isn’t entirely specific to iOS. Dictated Facebook posts appear with [OBJ] appearing at the end of the text. Chrome browser.

  3. This phone is ridiculous! So frustrating! My words are goobled on Facebook! Shame on Iphone for allowing this continue! I had to purchase more cloud space to do the dumb update and then its still there. Why am I not surprised? :'( Apple is such a waste of money at this point. Even the camera is less than what was promised.

  4. Still happening to me on 13.5.1 — and it happens on post comments that were NOT dicated.

  5. Still happening when I dictate on iOS 13.3.1 (which is latest public version) when dictating on Slack too.

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