Social media followers were in for a shock when Facebook users were alerted falsely by the networking site that an explosion had taken place in Thailand's busy capital, Bangkok. With the introduction of the "Safety Check" Feature in Facebook, users in areas considered dangerous are alerted to enter themselves as being safe.

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While the news spread quickly, users were falsely alerted about an "explosion" when in reality protesters in Bangkok threw fire crackers at a government head office, the BBC reported. After that, the Safety Check feature took over creating a page titled "The Explosion in Bangkok, Thailand." On seeing this page,  users automatically began registering themselves as being safe.

Also, the page referenced a link to a story reported in an online Bangkok publication. The story falsely referenced a breaking news video by the British Broadcasting service which had taken place in 2015, during a blast outside the Erawan shrine.

Users criticized the false alarm claiming that a suspected terrorist attack in a populated Asian city was a cause for concern as it could trigger unwarranted panic.

Furthermore, many users believe the cause for the spread of the false news item was due to the British broadcasters' logo being used on the news item. The logo of the reputed news outlet misled readers into believing the news item was authentic. 

According to Bloomberg, the alert system has been used more than 200 times, since it was introduced in June 2015. Critics believe the problem lies with passing responsibility to its users to verify the authenticity of the news items.

Facebook said in a statement that as more users become accustomed to its safety check, fewer incidents like the Bangkok scare were likely to take place. The safety mechanism check was debuted during Napalm's earthquake disaster which claimed more than 9,000 lives.

The false alarm was picked up by many international news channels: