Facebook users were forced to do a double take on Friday as they leisurely scoped out their friends’ profiles. 
 
 At the top of the page, some people, including verified users, reported seeing memorial banners. 
 
 The problem: the person memorialized wasn’t actually dead. 
 
 “We hope people who love [Facebook user] will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate [his or her] life,” the banner read. 
 
 The switch to memorial pages left users shocked and confused. 
 
 “Having a tough day today, but not dead, just in case Facebook tries to claim that I am,” one user posted. 
 
 “I’m still alive at the moment!” another person exclaimed. 
 
 Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg fell victim to the apparent bug. 
 
 The company later addressed the “terrible error” in a statement provided to CBS News. 
 
 “For a brief period today, a message meant for memorialized profiles was mistakenly posted to other accounts,” a Facebook spokesman said. “This was a terrible error that we have now fixed. We are very sorry that this happened and we worked as quickly as possible to fix it.” 
 
 Facebook Thursday: Fake news is not a problem 
 
 Facebook Friday: Mark Zuckerberg is dead. Your friends are dead. We are all dead. — Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) November 11, 2016 
 
 Facebook is now saying we're all dead https://t.co/V14fPuymnC pic.twitter.com/rUOCAyC0Xz — Marc Zwygart (@mediaadvantages) November 11, 2016 
 
 According to Facebook, memorialized accounts can only be requested after a person passes away. 
 
 “If Facebook is made aware that a person has passed away, it’s our policy to memorialize the account,” Facebook explained in a post. ||||| Image copyright Facebook Image caption Facebook's own CEO was among the "dead" during the bug's brief appearance 
 
 An unusual bug on Facebook briefly labelled many people as dead. 
 
 The error on Friday caused the social network to show a memorial banner on user profiles for people who were still alive. 
 
 Users posted status updates to reassure friends and family they were not dead, despite Facebook's message. 
 
 "This was a terrible error that we have now fixed," a Facebook spokesperson said. "We are very sorry that this happened." 
 
 The message, intended for "memorialised profiles", erroneously appeared on the profile pages of a large number of users - including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 
 
 "We hope people who love Mark will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate his life," the banner on his page read. 
 
 Technology reporters and Facebook users, however, saw a humorous side to the story. 
 
 Image copyright Facebook Image caption Many users felt the need to clarify things, often with a sense of humour 
 
 Image copyright @jarretsays 
 
 Image copyright @EmmettPlant 
 
 "Why Is Facebook Saying I'm Dead?" asked the New York Times' Katie Rogers. "At first, I was indignant. I was definitely not dead. Then I thought I had been hacked. Then I asked a few of my colleagues. Also dead." 
 
 "Facebook is capping one of the longest weeks in American history by telling everyone that they are dead," quipped The Verge, a technology website, in reference to the presidential election. 
 
 The memorial feature was introduced by Facebook in 2015 because of a number of high-profile cases where family wanted to access the social accounts of deceased loved ones. 
 
 User can opt to have their account turn into a memorial page upon their death, where Facebook contacts can leave message and share memories. 
 
 An alternative option is to have your account deleted after your death. ||||| (Courtesy of Facebook.) 
 
 Facebook has announced that it will grant users more control over what happens to their Facebook pages after they die. Starting Thursday, users should see a new option pop up in their security settings that will let them choose whether they want to pass their information and account management over to someone else when the time comes. 
 
 This is not something that people like to talk about. But the truth is that what happens to your data after death is as big a question now as what happens to your physical property. Just think of all the information you store online, or communicate in e-mail. Google already offers a similar tool to let you decide what to do with the trove of e-mail and other data it has on its users. Yahoo Japan has a full-fledged service to let people know about your death and handle all of your data management. 
 
 Facebook is a bit of a different animal, however, since it's social by design. The site was originally designed for college students by a college student. It's probably safe to say that handling the profiles of the dead wasn't a consideration Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg gave much thought to in his Harvard dorm room. So Facebook has had to evolve a response over time -- Facebook pages are often a place where friends and family congregate to grieve. The company already offers the option for people to report the death of a Facebook user, which "memorializes" the account and basically freezes it. You can't change anything posted, change the audience for any postings or even log in to the account. 
 
 But that wasn't enough for a lot of Facebook users, said Vanessa Callison-Burch, a Facebook product manager. "There were a lot of asks about features we could add," she said. "People wanted the ability to respond to new friend requests, and do more with the account going forward." 
 
 After a year of working on the project, Facebook is implementing some changes based on feedback it's gotten from users. As of Thursday, there will be three basic options: 
 
 You can do nothing, in which case the current rules apply and your account can be memorialized by anyone after your death, providing that the company gets adequate proof of your death. 
 
 You can ask Facebook to delete your account after you die. 
 
 You can designate someone -- called your legacy contact -- to manage your account. Once Facebook is notified of your death, your timeline will also change to let people know you've died. Facebook does this by adding the word "Remembering" ahead of your name -- i.e. "Remembering John Doe." 
 
 
 
 How you'll be able to set a legacy contact, from your security settings. (Courtesy of Facebook.) 
 
 The legacy contact must be a Facebook user and will be able to do specific things, such as accept requests from those who want to befriend an account to do things such as post messages on a user's timeline. Contacts will also be able to pin posts to the top of a profile page and change the late person's profile picture or cover photo. To keep from unduly upsetting a deceased Facebook users' friends, these types of notifications will be suppressed -- meaning you shouldn't see them pop up on your own timeline, alongside normal profile updates. 
 
 Facebook users can also specify whether they'd like the legacy contact to access a downloadable archive of their Facebook information after death. Sure, the information you post on Facebook probably isn't crucial -- your photos, your cheesy inspirational quotes, your bad puns -- but those little things are also often what people miss about you when you're gone. 
 
 Photo access, in particular, is one thing that Facebook often gets asked about in the event of a Facebook user's death, Callison-Burch said. 
 
 Messages, however, aren't included in this archival data, since you can't grant sharing permission for the person on the other side of the conversation. Unfortunately, that's the same reason that pages that are currently memorialized won't be able to access these new features -- there's just no way to get that retroactive permission, she said. 
 
 When you pick a legacy contact, you can choose whether to notify them at that time or not. You can also change your legacy contact at any time -- and he or she won't be notified of that change -- just in case your circumstances change. 
 
 Facebook is going to continue working on ways to make this painful process a little smoother over time. Callison-Burch said her team thinks of this as the first version of this tool, including just the most-requested features that it's heard from users. 
 
 The legacy contact option will come to the United Statesd first. Users who designate a legacy contact will be reminded each year about their decision, in case they want to make any changes. Facebook plans to bring the feature to other countries, but is taking its time to make sure that it responds with care to each country's attitudes toward death.
– Killing off millions of users is as bad as a mistake as a website can make—but luckily for Facebook, it was reversible. The company apologized for a "terrible error" Friday that caused the profiles of many users—including Mark Zuckerberg—to be switched to the "memorialized" version used after people die, the BBC reports. "We hope people who love Mark will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate his life," said the message under the "Remembering Mark Zuckerberg" banner. Pages are usually only memorialized after a user dies and friends or family request the change and provide proof of death. Affected users scrambled to reassure friends and family that they were still alive, CBS reports. "Having a tough day today, but not dead, just in case Facebook tries to claim that I am," one user posted. Facebook said it had introduced a new message for memorialized pages and accidentally displayed it on the accounts of around 2 million living users. "We are very sorry that this happened and we worked as quickly as possible to fix it," a spokesman said. The Guardian notes that the blunder happened just two days after Zuckerberg insisted that fake news on Facebook played no role in people's voting decisions.