1,500 Birthday Guests Come After Facebook Privacy Settings SNAFU
In Germany, Birthday girl Thessa, 16, published an invitation meant for just a few friends, but left the "public" checkbox checked. Because of that, 15,000 people said that they would be there. Naturally, her parents promptly cancelled the party.
That didn't stop more than more than 1,500 "guests" and 100 police officers showed up at the party. Some of the "attendees" had prepared signs saying "Where is Thessa?" and brought birthday presents and cake.
The "party" went off from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday in Hamburg. Yes, poor Hamburg, already suffering as the epicenter of the E. coli outbreak in Europe, can't catch a break. It's not like the authorities there near a crazy party to distract them from helping the ill.
While mostly peaceful, eleven people were temporarily detained and one police officer was injured. Firefighters also had to extinguish two small fires.
Interestingly, a simple change by Facebook would prevent these mistakes from happening again. If they simply made the check box for "public" events unchecked by default, none of this would happen.