Facebook Inc.'s Safety Check Malfunctioned After Terrorist Attack in Pakistan

The social media network publicly apologized for the malfunction of its safety feature.

The Safety Feature on the social media platform, Facebook Inc. has been there for a while now however, it is far from perfect yet. Yesterday, apparently the Safety Check feature malfunctioned; since there was a terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan, the social media network enabled its safety feature. However, instead of the people sitting in Lahore, the website sent push notifications to people all across the Pacific asking them if they were safe.

The blast happened at Gulshan-I-Iqbal in Lahore, Pakistan at a park on Sunday which left 65 dead and hundreds terribly injured. Most of these victims and casualties included women and children as the blast happened in a park, as per the reports. However, Facebook enabled its safety check feature which it usually does in case a disaster of such magnitude or a natural disaster occurs anywhere in the world. The sole purpose of the safety check is to ensure that people in the affected areas are safe and it has become another way of families to reach their loved ones and know if they are okay or not.

However, this time, the safety check feature on the social media website malfunctioned and sent push notifications to people where all across the globe. The social media organization has come forward and apologized publicly for this mishap and addressed it as a ‘glitch’ and ‘bug’ in their system. Even though a lot of people were affected because of this incident, the feature failed to serve its purpose and did exactly opposite of what it was actually intended to do.

The company has a user base strength of over 1.55 billion and it has not yet disclosed how much of these active users were affected by this glitch in their system. The news came out after a number of people expressed their frustration and annoyance at the confusing notifications they were receiving from Facebook. The people who reported this glitch in various cities include people from Washington D.C., London, New York etc.

These people who received these push notifications stated that they received notifications of a blast near their area and the location was not even specified which caused a panic as they believed that the blast took place in their own city. However, there were only a few people who faced this issue in those areas while others did not receive any such notification from the social media site. The social media company is still working on what went wrong with the feature however this is not the first time something like this has happened with the specific feature.

In October 2014, the social media network introduced this safety check feature which was meant to keep users informed regarding any natural disaster that took place in their city including earthquakes, cyclones etc. However, they pondered over human based attacks as well and decided that they would enable the feature for such incidents as well. In November last year, during the Paris Terrorist Attack, the organization enabled the safety feature so users were able to inform their loved ones that they were alright. Since then, the safety feature has been activated for numerous such events especially in the first three months of 2016.

Despite the fact that this false alarm annoyed and confused a lot of Facebook users, it might not be as bad as it seems as it managed to keep people of the world informed regarding such an attack in another country.