My wife ran into the same problem on her iPhone 7 plus. I finally discovered a solution to the problem that worked for me when nothing else did.
For no particular reason I can find, the Facebook app kept coming up with that error message any time she tried to log in. Some experimentation with two different macs, an android phone and the web version on her phone showed it wasn't an actual login error, as logging in worked fine everywhere else other than the app on her phone.
I did my due diligence on the internet and tried virtually all of the "fixes" people gave for the problem. No, nothing worked. Here's a list of the things I tried that didn't help.
- Update the app to the latest version.
- Delete the app and reinstall. Tried several variations on this including deleting it from the home screen, deleting it from the Settings/Storage screen (with and without deleting its data), and restarting the phone in between deleting and reinstalling.
- Reset the network settings.
- Turn off wi-fi and run on cellular data.
- Hard restart the phone.
- Verified the phone's time and date were being set automatically.
- Reset the phone's location and privacy data.
- On a web browser, logged in on Facebook and deleted all other logins.
So at this point my wife is grousing every time she has to use FB on the Safari browser on the phone since I can't seem to find a solution that works. A couple of weeks later she managed to break her phone; got it caught in a boot loop rendering it useless. Being eligible for an upgrade, we decided it was time to get her a new phone, but with the pandemic in full force we felt it best to order one online rather than go to the store, meaning it was going to be a few days before it arrived.
As a stopgap measure, I pulled out an old iPhone 6S that wasn't being used, swapped in her SIM card and brought it up for her. Meanwhile, I traced the problem on the iPhone 7 plus to something on the front camera/proximity sensor/speaker connector; unplugging it allowed the phone to boot. So while it was alive, even temporarily, I hooked it up to her MacBook and did a full backup, saving all her settings, contacts, pictures, apps, etc.
Since she was stuck using the 6S for a few days, out of curiosity I downloaded the Facebook app on it. Entered her user ID and password and logged in with no problem. That confirmed that the issue was definitely with the previous phone; I assume there was some kind of data that persisted even when you deleted the app that was causing the problem.
Okay, fast forward a few days and the new phone is here, a shiny new iPhone 11 Pro. Powered it up and went through all the steps to set it up then did the restore of all her data from the backup. We should be good now, right?
Yeah, you guessed it - the FB app did exactly the same thing it did before, giving me the dreaded Login Error.
Once I finished banging my head on the desk, I got to thinking and wondered if there was a way to clear out the bad data that had obviously been backed up along with the Facebook app. I poked around on the phone itself for quite a while and didn't find anything to let you delete data associated with a specific app. But then I got to wondering, what if the data isn't there to be backed up? Then the restore can't put the bad data back on the phone!
Aha, worth a try. Here's what I did.
- Deleted the Facebook app using the Settings / Storage menu, including all its data.
- Restarted the phone to try and make sure the data wasn't still hanging around.
- Plugged it into the MacBook and did another backup.
- Using the iTunes controls, did a full restore of the phone, wiping all the data on it.
- Ran the restore procedure, and all the steps that come before and after it.
Okay, the phone is back to where it was, minus Facebook. Proceeded with the rest of these instructions.
- Brought up the App Store on the phone and did another Facebook download.
- Once that finished, I tapped the app icon and brought it up to the login screen.
- Entered my wife's username and password.
HALLELUJAH! It worked! *dancing in the streets followed by an amazing fireworks display followed*
So there you have it; a fairly straight-forward if rather time-consuming fix for this bloody issue that nothing else worked for.
Hopefully this will help others since I've seen a LOT of people asking this question and clicking the "I have this question too" button with nothing much in the way of useful answers coming back.