A new Facebook bug has been noticed on the site and has declared users to be deceased.
Well, this is awkward! After having a long and stressful week, some Facebook users are been faced with a new facebook bug that has just declared them dead! The glitch is displaying a memorial message above users’ homepage profile.
The new glitch seems to have reached a lot of users, and might have spiked rumors of the death of even Facebook CEO- Mark Zuckerberg which was greatly exaggerated. A little top banner on Mark’s profile page reads “We hope people who love Mark will find comfort in the thing others share to remember and celebrate his life.”
Update: Facebook has since apologized for a “terrible” mistake.
Just a day earlier, Zuckerberg had said the idea that fake news on Facebook could sway people in their voting decisions was “crazy”.
Before the company fixed the bug a lot of fans of popular rival Twitter, where online to grab a bite of Facebook’s new bug.
God is dead. – Nietzche, 1883
Nietzche is dead. – God, 1900
Everyone is dead. – Facebook, 2016
— Ryan Calo (@rcalo) November 11, 2016
Facebook thinks I'm dead. (Cash donations in lieu of memorial flowers please, folks, if you don't mind 😉 ) pic.twitter.com/w4ykkVLuA4
— Cath Holland (@cathholland01) November 11, 2016
https://twitter.com/wyldweasil/status/797181989115822080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/themikefoss/status/797182268280188932?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
It is reported that the glitch is linked to the user viewing the profile rather than the individual accounts- some of us(even me) didn’t see any issues during this period.
A Facebook spokesman said to Engadget ,
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.
Facebook has a system to identify a dead person by submitting a formal request. This is the best way it can use to identify deceased family members or friends on the social networking site, so as not to include them in People You May Know, birthday reminders, e.t.c
For the request to be approved a user must identify the account of the deceased individual, the date of death and show recognized proof of death such as obituary or death certificate. “This is very helpful to the team that reviews memorialization requests,” says Facebook.
If a request is accepted, the word “remembering” is shown next to the person’s name.
Users on the site can also appoint someone while they are alive to help them manage their account when they die. If a user fails to do this, the profile is preserved but can’t be edited.