Social media giant Facebook has admitted that more than 800,000 users on its platform were hit by a bug that temporarily unblocked people whom some users had blocked on the platform.
Facebook has several privacy settings, one which includes blocking certain users on the platform from connecting with certain users. Once a user has been blocked by another on Facebook, the blocked user won't be able to post, message or view things from the other persons wall. Blocking automatically unfriends the blocked user.
"Starting today we are notifying over 800,000 users about a bug in Facebook and Messenger that unblocked some people they had blocked," Facebook said in a post. "The bug was active between May 29 and June 5 and — while someone who was unblocked could not have see content shared with friends, they could have seen things posted to a wider audience. For example pictures shared with friends of friends. We know that the ability to block someone is important — and we'd like to apologize and explain what happened."
Facebook went on to explain that the bug did not "reinstate any friend connections that had been severed" and about "83 percent of people affected by the bug had only one person they had blocked temporarily unblocked." And "someone who was unblocked might have been able to contact people on Messenger who had blocked them."
Some weeks ago, Facebook announced to the public how a critical security bug exposed about 14 million users private posts to the public. Though the social media giant has said that the issue has been fixed and those who were unblocked due to the bug has been blocked again, it still says those who were affected will get a notification on Facebook encouraging them to check their blocked list.