A 14-year-old girl received 21,000 RSVPs to her birthday party after including her address on a Facebook invitation page.
The girl, from Hertfordshire in England, only intended to invite 15 people, but mistakenly made party details public, resulting in thousands of unwanted RSVPs to the party.
Fake celebrity accounts also confirmed their attendance, such as Pr. Stephen Hawking, Justin Bieber, Stevie Wonder, Susan Boyle and Rick Astley.
The party was cancelled, however, and police have said they will be patrolling the area on 7 October, the day the party was supposed to take place.
“We are aware of this and have been assured that the event is no longer taking place,” said Sgt Lewis Ducket, Harpenden neighbourhood office of Hertfordshire Police.
“I would urge people who may be planning to come to Harpenden for the party to make other plans.
“We will have officers on patrol in the area on 7 October to provide a reassuring presence and who will be able to deal with any issues, should they arise.”
Mum not happy
The girl’s mother is furious about the incident.
“Her party is cancelled and she will be lucky to get a birthday card from me after this. I said she could have 15 friends along to the party but my sister-in-law said that 8,000 people had said on Facebook that they were coming,” she said.
“She did not realise that she was creating a public event and should have done. She is going to have to change her mobile phone SIM card because of the number of calls she has been getting about it.”
She also added that she was dissatisfied with Facebook’s privacy options.
“They should make it obvious that an event that is created is not just going out to your friends but everyone else on the site. When this happened Facebook should have realised that thousands of people going to a 14-year-old’s party is not right and shut the group down automatically,” said the girl’s mother.
A Facebook spokesperson emphasised that privacy settings are available for events created for the site, which are separate to those for users’ profiles.
Users can make an event private or public through this.
