Facebook has just disclosed another issue it accidentally created. The company accidentally unblocked people who have been blocked by over 800,000 Facebook users.
Facebook blames a technical bug for this and confirmed that the bug was live from May 29th until June 5. Now the company has fixed the bug and those people had been accidently unlocked are back to block list again.
The good thing was that the blocked persons were just unblocked but were not made friends even if they were your friend prior to the block. So, they couldn’t see any of your posts until you posts things publicly. Those users could send friend requests or messages on Messenger.
Facebook is now notifying all 800,000+ users about this issue. If you receive the notification, you should check your block list and see if any of the person you blocked is missing from the list.
Facebook also confirmed that 83% of the people affected from the bug only had one person in the block list.
800,000 is a considerable number even if that is just a tiny fraction of Facebook’s user base. People on Facebook block any user to avoid bullying, prevent harassment or ignore him completely. Keeping blocked users back to unlock could lead to any form of cyber-abuse.
