Indianapolis News and Headlines

Actions

Facebook glitch declares thousands of people dead

Posted at 4:10 PM, Nov 11, 2016
and last updated 2016-11-11 18:26:28-05

INDIANAPOLIS -- Thousands of people suddenly found themselves dead on Friday – at least on Facebook, anyway.

 

Normally when the owner of a Facebook page dies, the page can be converted to a "memorialized account" which allows loved ones to remember them in perpetuity -- or for as long as Facebook lasts.

 

Apparently, on Friday, thousands of users accounts were temporarily switched to memorialized accounts. Those affected include several RTV6 reporters and even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself.

The cause of the glitch wasn't known, but the affected accounts appeared to be reverting to normal shortly after the problem was noticed.

 

Facebook released the following statement about 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."