Facebook apologised to users on the other side of the world from Sunday's suicide bombing in Lahore who received computer-addressed notices asking whether they were safe.
Social Media News: Facebook users as far away as Virginia and New York showed notifications they received on social media site Twitter.
"Tragically, numerous people not affected by the crisis received a notification asking if they were alright," Facebook said in a post on its site. "This kind of bug is counter to the product's intent... We apologise to anybody who erroneously got the notification."
Some of the notices went out as text messages to mobile phones and asked, "Are you affected by the blast?" without giving any sign of where, or how close, the recipients were to danger.
More common notices showed on mobile devices and computer screens said the blast was in Lahore.
The blast by a suicide bomber at a park killed, at least, sixty nine (69) individuals, mostly children and women.
The flawed notices were the most recent stumble in Facebook's developing "Safety Check" practice of prompting users to rapidly let their friends know they are alright after being in the vicinity of a disaster.
In November, hours after blasts in Nigeria, Facebook activated Safety Check after criticism that it was being particular about deploying it. A couple of days before those blasts, Facebook had utilized it after bomb and gun attacks in Paris but not after suicide bombings in Beirut. Facebook already had utilized the feature after natural disasters, but not bombings or assaults.
Originally Published on Daily Times
Originally Published on Daily Times