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Facebook users as far away as New York and Virginia showed
notifications they received on social media site Twitter.
"Unfortunately, many people not affected by the crisis received
a notification asking if they were okay," Facebook said in a
post on its site. "This kind of bug is counter to the product's
intent... We apologize to anyone who mistakenly received the
notification."
Some of the notices went out as text messages to mobile phones
and asked, "Are you affected by the explosion?" without giving
any indication of where, or how close, the recipients were to
danger.
More common notices displayed on computer screens and mobile
devices said the explosion was in Lahore. The blast by a suicide
bomber at a park killed at least 65 people, mostly women and
children.
The flawed notices were the latest stumble in Facebook's
evolving "Safety Check" practice of prompting users to quickly
let their friends know they are okay after being in the vicinity
of a tragedy.
In November, hours after blasts in Nigeria, Facebook activated
Safety Check after criticism that it was being selective about
deploying it. A few days before those blasts, Facebook had used
it after gun and bomb attacks in Paris but not after suicide
bombings in Beirut.
Facebook previously had used the feature after natural
disasters, but not bombings or attacks.
(Reporting by David Henry in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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