We knew that Facebook knows a whole lot about its users, but this is a little too much. Several users logging into Facebook yesterday were told that they were, in fact, dead.
Facebook yesterday launched its Memorial feature, and went a little overboard with its enthusiasm. Several user profiles carried a heartwarming message remembering their owners who were very much alive.
And it didn’t even spare founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuck dead pic.twitter.com/J8y5LbfQBz
— Steve Kovach (@stevekovach) November 11, 2016
“Remembering Mark Zuckerberg,’ said a message above Zuckerberg’s profile. “We hope people who love Mark will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate his life,” it continued. The banner even had a pretty blue flower next to it for added effect.
Zuckerberg wasn’t the only person affected by the bug. Users across the world were killed off by the social network.
There was an extinction level event on Facebook pic.twitter.com/xxkr1t1ptC
— Anthony Quintano (@AnthonyQuintano) November 11, 2016
The mass digital homicide soon came to the attention of Facebook, which promptly fixed the glitch. “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 said in a statement.
The message on profiles are now gone, but some Facebook engineer is presumably very embarrassed right now. There are few worse ways to screw up at work than kill off your CEO.