Early Friday morning, Facebook users across the world awoke to find messages in their accounts informing them that every piece of content they had ever posted had been flagged for violations of community standards, and consequently, they had been banned from the platform indefinitely.
Honestly, we’re about as shocked as you are that you’re reading this article. We can’t even explain how you saw it, or if anyone has seen it, for that matter.
Anyhow, users everywhere received the same message stating Facebook had determined that all pictures, memes, videos, and text ever posted on the website were highly inappropriate. All users in all countries of all ages were affected by policy changes and software update.
“We’re just trying to make sure Facebook is a place where everyone feels welcome,” said founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We recognize how important it is for Facebook to be a place where people feel empowered to communicate, and we take our role in keeping abusive language and images off our service quite seriously.”
Apparently, Facebook’s new algorithm which soft-launched in the US earlier this week used it’s ingenious calculations and employed a combination of skin tone and body shape recognition software coupled with their new proprietary “naughty words” technology to locate, flag, and remove anything deemed inappropriate.
Assuming there was some mistake, many users attempted to put in review requests, however, they were all immediately denied. “I only post Minion memes and inspirational quotes,” said 82-year-old Blanch Duggard of Tennessee. “They told me my puppy meme was pornography and that my post about winning first prize in the science fair was exclusionary hate speech,” remarked 14-year-old Sarah Miller of San Francisco.
At first, it appeared that there may have been a glitch in the new software, however, Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement at 6:30 am, clarifying that the platform was, in fact, operating properly. “Facebook’s new algorithm update is performing as planned,” said Zuckerberg. “We were unaware just how many of our users were posting content which violated our community standards, but we stand by the decision to delete everything from our servers and remove all users.”
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke out about their other properties. “For good measure, we may implement the new algorithm on Instagram and WhatsApp later this month,” remarked Sandberg. “We’re very pleased with the results thus far and the direction the company is going in. We’re confident we’ve made the right move.”
Since the announcement, Facebook’s stock price has dropped from $190/share to $0.001/share and the stock market has crashed over 10,000 points. Twitter users have announced plans for a worldwide mass suicide happening Sunday afternoon. If you’re interested in participating, check out the trending hashtag #FacebookSuicideParty2019 for further details.