Facebook apologizes for sending the notifications to wrong people

Facebook has apologized for sending out the notifications to the wrong people. Facebook activated the Safety Check function yesterday after the explosion in Lahore, Pakistan cause by a suicide bomber killing more than 70 people. However, the company just sent the notifications to the wrong people, who are living in thousands of miles away from those who are suffering the incident.

Facebook’s Safety Check was introduced two years ago, which is expected to be activated to help users to confirm their families or friends that they are safe in an area affected by a natural disaster or by a terrorist attack. To utilize the Safety Check function, the company will send notifications in the application or browsers asking “Are you safe?” and providing a chance to respond and post it onto their News Feed. Technically, the notifications will be sent for people in the affected area if the users are at danger.

Yet related reports showed that the latest Safety Check alerts, which were intended to send for people suffering from Lahore bombing attack, were mistakenly sent to locations far away from the target regions, even some locations in the United States and the United Kingdoms had received the notifications.

As for the wrong sending, Facebook has apologized in the company’s Disaster Response page, saying, “We hope the people in the area of the bombing find Safety Check a useful and helpful way to let their friends and family know they are okay. Unfortunately, many people not affected by the crisis received a notification asking if they were okay. This kind of bug is counter to our intent. We worked quickly to resolve the issue and we apologize to anyone who mistakenly received the notification.”

Technical mistakes can’t be avoided, but the wrong notifications sending may exert bad impacts. Since the accident has taken place, all we can do is to hope that the notifications can be sent to the right people and help more people in need in the future.