The "view as" button in my Facebook profile disappeared! What happened?

[Peachy_Dandy]

Ack! I would like to know how certain people see my profile. I was able to use this feature just a couple of hours ago, and now it's gone! I can't figure out how to get it back, nor do I know how to contact facebook about this. Can anyone help?
Well, as of now, it's back. I reported this problem to facebook as a "bug". I suppose that's what did it, even though they didn't respond to me personally. Oh well. Thanks anyway all for your replies!

[bluejaye]

I too am searching for this button in facebook! My button disappeared also. Try posting this question in the facebook help section.

[SIVANESON]

Same here also.

[Ivolution]

The button seems to be gone, but I doubt that it's permanent. The feature still exists. So here's a hack to get you by.

1) Go to your profile page.
2) In the address bar, tack on ?viewas=00 at the end and press enter
3) Ta-da, there's the feature you were looking for. Enter any friend you want in the field provided.

How it should look
All that's needed in the address bar is in the example below.

http://www.facebook.com/your_profile?viewas=00

In that example, your_profile stands for a unique ID number or username for your profile, which you'll find by visiting it.

Still not working?
In some cases, you may need to remove a few slashes (/) and an existing question mark (?), possibly a pound sign (#) and some in between text to make it work. In most cases, refreshing with F5 will do that for you. Then tack on the extra text.

How it works
The ?viewas= parameter is followed by a friend's ID or username. It requires two digits to avoid generating an error, so 00 is just dummy text to make it work. If you know the friend's ID or username, you can actually type or paste it in after the equal sign.

Why is the button missing today? (Opinion*)
I doubt it's permanent. This is an important privacy feature which, as part of a pretty well-received privacy overhaul by Facebook, was recently moved from an obscure place four clicks away in the privacy page to the front of your profile, where it conveniently lets you see if your post privacy is working as you intended. The new placement was an indication of the feature's rising importance. I notice that the public link (click it to see how your profile looks to the general public) in the viewas box isn't working properly today either. That may be a sign of a feature under construction. My guess is that they're troubleshooting some bugs, possibly found an unexpected privacy violation and are working to address it. I'd check back later to see if the button is back.

*UPDATE: The button is back, 39 minutes later. And the "public" link works again