Thousands of female Facebook users had their accounts inexplicably disabled today. They did not violate Facebook's terms of use but nevertheless, they are seeing messages claiming their accounts are "inauthentic," according to Me & Her.
Facebook has confirmed the issue and is asking users to scan and upload a copy of a valid driver's license in order to reactivate their accounts. The mass-deactivations are a small percentage of Facebook's total subscriber base, but the number of users affected is easily in the thousands.
While Facebook is in the process of restoring the affected accounts, the way it is going about doing so is a hassle for the users affected. Instead, Facebook should reactivate all the deactivated accounts and then manually go through them again. This is Facebook's fault and the burden should be on the social networking giant, not its users.
"Earlier today, we discovered a bug in a system designed to detect and disable likely fake accounts," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. "The bug, which was live for a short period of time, caused a very small percentage of Facebook accounts to be mistakenly disabled. Upon discovering the bug, we immediately worked to resolve it. It's now been fixed, and we're in the process of reactivating and notifying the people who were affected."