Last night, Facebook was acting pretty strangely for a handful of users across the globe. While others were stupefied to find out that their close friend is no more(or dead!) and the social media giant is asking you to remember him and offer your condolences.
Yes, what you’re reading isn’t a hoax or click bait! Facebook suddenly ‘memorialized’ the profiles of millions of users, suggesting to everyone that the person to whom this page belonged is now dead, reports TechCrunch. While not all global users were affected by this bug, the system didn’t waste any time in labeling its own founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg dead as well.
The official memorial message displayed atop the Facebook profiles of the deceased read,
We hope people who love [person] will find comfort in the things other share to remember and celebrate his life.
And once the bug spread around, the interwebs, especially Twitter, started flooding with responses from real users who were still alive. This crowd also included those who didn’t miss the chance to mock Zuckerberg over control on his platform and his sudden demise. Some others believed the reason behind so many users falling dead at the same instant was particularly related to the U.S presidential election result(which I find absolutely hilarious!!).
Facebook what is happening i am not dead. pic.twitter.com/irVc3UvJ8Y
— Kate Nocera (@KateNocera) November 11, 2016
when Facebook told me I was dead today, I figured it was just a test of the new emergency broadcast system for Trump’s nuclear war.
— cartogeek (@cartogeek) November 11, 2016
Facebook has not only successfully fixed the ‘memorializing’ bug which sneaked onto the social platform but also apologized for the same. It has issued a statement saying,
For a brief period today, a message meant for memorialized profiles was mistakenly posted to other accounts. This was a terrible error that we have now fixed. We are very sorry that this happened and we worked as quickly as possible to fix it.
For those unaware, Facebook announced the ‘legacy contacts’ feature which allows account holders to nominate other users to stand as their accounts’ caretakers in the case of the account owner’s death. This is accompanied by a memorial message that was being displayed atop the profiles due to this bug.
