Over the weekend, Facebook played virtual gravedigger and 'killed' thousands of users. Why?
Facebook is a social network used daily by millions around the world. It's not uncommon for something to go wrong on one of its servers, leading to outages. That’s exactly what happened over the weekend, when the platform accidentally marked thousands of users as deceased — including its founder, Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook marked users as deceased
Luckily, representatives of the platform quickly responded and issued a statement reading:
"For a short time this morning, you may have noticed that many accounts were incorrectly marked as In memoriam. This horrifying error was quickly resolved, and fortunately, everything has returned to normal. We strive to fix bugs as quickly as possible."
In memoriam - remembering the deceased, even on Facebook
The In memoriam status is assigned to accounts reported by close family members who wish to honor their deceased loved ones. This allows a designated administrator to manage the deceased user’s account — even adding new friends.
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Summary
A weekend outage on Facebook mistakenly labeled thousands of accounts with the In memoriam status — reserved for profiles of deceased users. Among the 'deceased' was Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Platform representatives reacted swiftly, fixed the issue, and apologized in a statement.
The In memoriam status is given to accounts reported by close family members who wish to memorialize their loved ones — an administrator can manage the account and even add new friends.
