Are you getting a lot of really annoying Facebook notifications telling you to wish someone a Happy Birthday? While it might seem like Facebook is at it again with user experiments, the truth is that it’s not Facebook at all causing the birthday overload. Facebook has a bug.

Facebook’s Notification Bug

Facebook has confirmed that the company has a bug in its notification system. This bug has caused the site to send out multiple birthday reminders and requests to users. The site typically only sends out one notification, and only sends those to people that request to be notified. Lately, though, Facebook has been sending out notifications to everyone.

What can you do about it? As of this morning, the bug still hasn’t been fixed. You may have noticed a few birthday notifications pop up through push notifications on your phone today, and there’s not much you can do about it. Even if you change your settings to stop those birthday notes, you’ll still get them thanks to the bug. You can delete your Facebook apps to completely stop getting any notifications and add them back at a later date, but that’s all that you can really do right now.

Fixed? Not so Fast

Facebook claims that the bug has been fixed, but notifications are still popping up for some people that don’t want any notifications at all. There are other questions surrounding Facebook’s odd notification policies too. Some wonder why the site doesn’t just send greetings to friends if users sign up for this service (would make things simpler, right?). Others wish that Facebook settings would stick once applied (this isn’t the first time that things go haywire where notifications through the site are concerned).

Others still wonder if some of Facebook’s glitches and bugs aren’t really experiments after all. It’s not unlike the site to experiment on its users, and figuring out just how annoyed people will get if enough notifications are sent out seems to be in line with what Facebook often does. But the company insists that this time it really was a bug, and that the notifications should have stopped or will be stopping soon enough.

Facebook Takes a Nosedive

The social network has been reporting some low user numbers over the last few months. People, as it seems, are getting tired of experiments, push notifications, and mindless greetings that tend to mean very little. In fact, social networks in general are starting to lose their core audience based on recent reported numbers. Why are these sites doing so badly? There are a myriad of reasons, but mostly it is because people are losing interest in social networks.

Some predict that sites like Facebook will be stagnant in less than a year while others see sites like Twitter moving on. It’s hard to say what sites will and won’t survive the social network crash, but (bug or no bug) sending out unwanted notifications to people is a good way to lose a few users. Hopefully, these notifications will stop soon across the board.