Facebook kills off a number of its users

Glitches in digital technology are inevitable. But they’re not always as potentially painful as the one Facebook experienced late last week.

Last week a number users noticed something peculiar: Just about all of their friends on the social site had died. Their friends weren’t really dead, of course. But many users’ profile pages included a banner that indicated they had indeed died.

“We hope people who love [name] will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate [his/her] life,” the banner read, according to Gizmodo.

Facebook’s founder also ‘dies’

And the glitch wasn’t limited to your average, everyday Facebook user. Even founder Mark Zuckerberg had “died,” and his profile included a “Remembering Mark Zuckerberg” banner.

On Friday afternoon the glitch was cleared up, but only partially. While everyone on the site appeared back to life, some reported that Facebook friends who were actually dead appeared as alive as well.

Later in the day that issue was cleared up as well. Living people were living again, and the dead were dead.

Facebook later released a 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.”

Tags: digital technology, facebook, facebook profiles, facebook users, mark zuckerberg, social media