Facebook Thought Many of its Living Users Were Dead

Facebook thought a bunch of its living, breathing users were dead

By Saqib Shah November 11, 2016

hand rising out of grave — Image used with permission by copyright holder

On Friday afternoon, Facebook randomly began mourning the passing of many of its users who were still alive. A number of people claimed they logged in to the service to find a status atop of their Facebook profile indicating they passed away.

Strangely, only people who were believed to be deceased could see the notification on other users’ profiles. It was like Facebook was amassing some sort of digital army of the dead, with Mark Zuckerberg as its supreme leader. Yes, as it turns out, the Facebook founder’s account was also affected by the error.

It's not just campaign staffers, it's everyone. Zuck is also dead pic.twitter.com/dYyW2e3VWx

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) November 11, 2016

Perhaps we all died and only Facebook knows about it? Isn’t everyone good as dead if Facebook says so? Jokes aside, the error caused much concern for users who may have seen the status above a friend or loved one’s profile.

Accompanied with one solitary blue flower, the message read: “We hope people who love [insert name] will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate [his or her] life.” It goes on to provide links to the memorialized accounts support page and management settings that can see to it that someone takes over your account — which we’re sure would be helpful in the event someone really did pass away, but that wasn’t the case.

Facebook tells Digital Trends the issue has been fixed. A spokesperson for the company emailed over the following statement: “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.”

Many people — who were at least alive enough to type out a tweet — have poked fun at the Facebook error on Twitter. One user claimed it may have occurred as a result of all the messages she was receiving on Friday. However, Facebook has not confirmed what caused the error.

I’m alive, promise. pic.twitter.com/5CM9fSCfko

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) November 11, 2016

in other news, Facebook's algorithm thinks that i ****died**** based on the messages i'm getting #RIPme pic.twitter.com/IfoCDumNCi

— Elaine Filadelfo (@ElaineF) November 11, 2016

For now, let us all take a moment to be thankful for the fact that we are actually alive and not just living out an afterlife in which the world has gone absolutely mad. If only it were that simple.

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