Facebook's 'safety check' feature malfunctioned on Sunday, and some users were terrified

Facebook rolled out its "safety check" feature in October 2014 to give its users a way to assure friends and family they were safe after natural disasters. Then, after last fall's Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, Facebook began activating "safety checks" for major terrorist attacks and other violence. When a suicide bomber attacked Gulshan-e-Iqbal park in Lahore, Pakistan, on Easter Sunday, with an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban taking responsibility for murdering at least 72 people and claiming they were targeting Christians (though most of the dead are Muslims), Facebook flipped on the feature again for users in the Lahore area. This time there was a bug.

"Unfortunately, many people not affected by the crisis received a notification asking if they were okay," Facebook said in a post on Sunday, after getting complaints from users in the U.S., Great Britain, India, and elsewhere. "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." Facebook didn't say what caused the bug, or how many users were affected, but many people who erroneously received an invitation — "Have you been affected by the explosion?" — said they were initially terrified that there had been a bombing nearby, since the message did not mention Lahore or Pakistan.

This is the eighth time Facebook has turned on the safety check feature this year, and the social networking giant usually receives positive feedback about the tool.