‘Terrible error’ on Facebook ‘kills’ users

It has been identified that a bug accidentally killed several Facebook users who are still alive with messages being posted on their accounts meant for memorialised profiles.

The complaints are rather silly – users are blaming the social media platform for content others post, in particular, fake news stories.

More people get their news on Facebook than ever before, but Mark Zuckerberg is still convinced fake news on Facebook was not that big a deal during the presidential election. Although the Cupertino-based company soon acknowledged the mistake after and termed it as a “terrible error” after fixing the problem.

The message, intended for “memorialised profiles”, was mistakenly posted to other accounts, a company representative said in an emailed statement. “This is very helpful to the team that reviews memorialisation requests”, says Facebook. A memorial banner briefly appeared across the top of his page.

Looking at how this is the 21st century and how much Facebook affects people’s lives I can see why this Facebook Bug would be very irritating for some people. The Guardian notes that the blunder happened just two days after Zuckerberg insisted that fake news on Facebook played no role in people’s voting decisions.

The loved ones of the “dead” Facebook user were encouraged to find comfort in seeing posts of other people shared about him/her.

The social network said it worked as fast as possible to correct the issue and apologised. Many users logged into Facebook only to find that the site was reporting them as deceased, turning their once lively profile into an online memorial.

“Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook.influenced the election in any way is a pretty insane idea”, Zuckerberg said during a Q&A on Thursday.

Zuckerberg further defended Facebook by claiming that the network’s fake news problem is “small” and not party-specific.