Facebook Bug Tells Users They Are Dead

On Friday afternoon, many Facebook users logged into their accounts to see that the social media site declared them to be dead. Fortune's Jeff John Roberts reports that the bug has impacted their editor Rachel King: The lethal online epidemic is causing Facebook to display a small memorial message above users' regular homepage profile. In the case of my editor, Rachel King, Fortune tech writers who visited her page discovered a "Remembering Rachel King" message, and a wish to remember to remember and celebrate her life. I can assure you that Rachel is very much alive (and reminding me about the Oxford comma). But if you're wondering what it looks like, here's a screenshot. I'm still alive (for now) but it appears the bug is spreading quickly to others in the media, and has reportedly even affected the pages of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While Friday's wave of Facebook fatalities was clearly a bug or a hoax of some sort, the social network does offer a function that allows people to turn the profile pages of loved ones into a "Memorial." The company has since fixed the bug and offered an apology: "For a brief period today, a message meant for memorialized profiles was briefly posted to other accounts. This was a terrible error that we now have fixed. We are very sorry that this happened and we worked as quickly as possible to fix it."

Re: facewhat? who cares

[Z00L00K]

Facebook is dead, move on.

We're not dead, we're in a simulation

[ArtemaOne]

Wake up

Re:

[desdinova 216]

that is way too deep for a Friday.

Re: We're not dead, we're in a simulation

[Zero__Kelvin]

No. You are the same as never having existed in the first place.

Re:

[Feral Nerd]

Wake up

Well, if we are in a simulation, can whoever is running it please debug and patch Donald Trump? He's been malfunctioning for years and it's getting worse.

Re:

[ArtemaOne]

The easiest thing to do is to patch the DNC, replacing Clinton with Sanders. That would have solved the other situation.

Re:

[ArtemaOne]

Right, as if those polls took into consideration how many "Never Hillary" and "Bernie or Bust" people there would be by the end of things. Did you see how few people voted? Trump took the bare minimum expected and Clinton took far below any expected minimum thought possible due to people disliking HER specifically.

Re:

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

The easiest thing to do is to patch the DNC, replacing Clinton with Sanders. That would have solved the other situation.

Damn straight. Sanders would have obliterated Trump.

The worst part of this whole debacle has to be placed squarely on the shoulders of a sleazy triumvirate consisting of Hillary Clinton herself, the DNC, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. This crooked cabal of cheaters worked their dirty little magic behind the scenes to torpedo Bernie Sanders, a much-loved candidate with no baggage who would have easily mopped the floor with Donald Trump. The unethical behavior and malicious tactics that Clinton, Shultz, and th

Re:We're not dead, we're in a simulation

[Kjella]

We're not dead, we're in a simulation. Wake up

If you do, are you still in a simulation? It's basically 2500+ years of philosophy that the Matrix first touched on and Inception continued, is anything real? Does it matter what's real? If it's a good dream, don't pinch me.

Re:We're not dead, we're in a simulation

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If it's a good dream, don't pinch me.

After Trump won I kept jabbing myself with a needle to try and wake up. Now I'm just doing it so I can feel something.

Re:

[Meski]

Flick me to hibernate for a while, I'm sick of this shit.

Re:

[gshegosh]

Does it matter what's real? If it's a good dream, don't pinch me.

It does matter, because if this isn't real life, but a mere simulation, it means that after we die, sim runners could restore as from backups and that in turn makes religious people actually right... Which kills my worldview a little bit ;)

Re:

[TapeCutter]

If you want a job, my ashtray needs a good scrub.

Had I a facebook account...

[TigerPlish]

...I, for one, would welcome the news of my untimely death.

Re:

[fred911]

Then you could have said, "Had I had" assuming you would have the ability post mortem:-)

Re:

[coastwalker]

I have one but I have not looked at it since last November. I might take a look next year but the news that I might have been declared dead on it is not incentive enough to take a look now. See I have concluded that intrusive advertising is against my religion, so that kind of nixes Facebook. It is extremely fortunate that the fixed advertisement story on Slashdot is not intrusive which is why I am still here. As it is also not an advertisement for the "only new vehicle which will not kill my children" but

Apologies: Status update was 4 days 2 hrs early

[Timmy D Programmer]

Please accept our apologies for prematurely updating your profile status. Please be assured the status has been corrected, and will be updated at the appropriate time on Tuesday. Sincerely, Facebook

Many-worlds interpretation bug.

[hey!]

Greetings from the Trouser of Time's other leg. Glad to see you made it.

CNN

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN: "Donald Trump kills thousands of Facebook users."
Brian Williams: "I was there."

well, they're not dead, yet

[turkeydance]

this is just encouragement

Obligatory

[Yvan256]

We apologise for the fault in the statuses. Those responsible have been sacked.

Re:

[JaredOfEuropa]

That beats: "We apologise for the fault in the statuses. We will visit each of the affected users in person to 'true up'"

Re:

[Meski]

Does this mean we'll be coming back as Facebook Llamas?

Thank god.

[SolemnLord]

Beats seeing what else 2016 has in store.

I'm not dead!

[PPH]

I don't want to go on the cart.

Re:

[MoarSauce123]

Hey, hey...only to uneducated white men, please. But don't worry. The Republicans are a back stabbing bunch. At the first chance they will impeach their President because they rather deal with the VP...one of the swampies that didn't get drained out.

That's odd

[buss_error]

I feel fine!

Actually, I deactivated (not deleted, since you can't really do that) my facebook account some time ago. I've no time for it. Got programs to write, don't cha know?

Re: That's odd

[Zero__Kelvin]

What makes you think you can't delete it?

Oh sure...

[digitig]

You say you're not dead, but how can we be sure?

QA? Who needs it?

[MoarSauce123]

Not surprised at all. QA is a bad word in the new software industry. Instead of testing and confirming stuff just gets pushed out. I guess those impacted can only quote Samuel Clemens: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

If only

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Facebook Bug Tells Users They Are Dead"

If only it were true.....

They're not dead

[CanadianMacFan]

Just pining for the fjords.

Who cares

[Gussington]

Who cares. Can't those of us who choose not to engage in such fads be left in peace without a FB or Twitter story everyday? This isn't TMZ...

Does it also tell them they vote democrat?

[BozoForPresident]

:D

They are DEAD, but the impostor complains

[syntotic]

First step in a Turing game. Do I have to explain? The account owner is really dead, but there is an impostor who wants to give a different impression (identity theft), so the impostor has to complain, otherwise the plan went floop and he may even be noticed. Once solved this peccata minuta the impostor can dedicate to the pretense that he is the dead person and collect more information or deceive people. Kind of Turing, can you be sure it is The Person on the other side of the site? Sounds like a good way