Tech

Facebook Has Canceled Its Massive Developer Conference Because of Coronavirus

Facebook's huge conference is no longer happening over Covid-19 fears.
Mark Zuckerberg.
Image: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Facebook announced Thursday that it will no longer hold F8, its annual developer conference because of the coronavirus outbreak.

"This was a tough call to make—F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world—but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on," Facebook wrote in a statement.

F8 is one of the biggest company-specific developer conferences, along with Apple's WWDC, Amazon Web Services' re:Invent, and Salesforce's Dreamforce. F8 was scheduled to happen May 5 and 6th in San Jose. Facebook says it will replace the conference with "a combo of locally hosted events, videos and live streamed content."

The move comes amid a series of high-profile game developers pulling out of next month's Game Developer Conference (GDC) and just a day after San Francisco declared a state of emergency over coronavirus (there are currently no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in San Francisco.)

Two years ago, this photo of Mark Zuckerberg a