This weekend the web discovered that Mark Zuckerberg is unblockable on Facebook, and while many assumed that was an Easter egg created by Facebook developers, it turns out that’s not the case. Rather, Zuckerberg is unblockable because of an automated system that kicks in when too many people try to block one user.
This afternoon we received an e-mail from a Facebook
spokesperson who revealed:
spokesperson who revealed:“This error isn’t specific to any one account. It’s generated when a person has been blocked a certain large number of times. In very rare instances, a viral campaign will develop instructing lots of people to all wrongly block the same person. The purpose of this system is to protect the experience for people targeted by these campaigns. We’re constantly working to improve our systems and are taking a closer look at this one.”
It’s not as fun an explanation as CEO vanity or developer facetiousness, but there you have it.
Attention to Zuckerberg’s unblockable status was initially brought by the website Block Zuck, but Gawkerspoke with the website’s founder and learned that the site was originally the base of operations for a viral campaign to mass-block Zuckerberg in protest of the social network’s controversial user privacy policies.
Campaigns like that one may very well have triggered Zuckerberg’s unblockable status. We can think of a few situations in which an undeserving innocent could be the victim of unfair mass blockings, so that could arguably be a good feature in some cases.
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