As part of a growing trend, another conference has been cancelled due to COVID-19, otherwise known as coronavirus. Facebook’s D8 developer conference is the latest event to be canned, postponed or heavily modified — the short version is that there won’t be any in-person gathering going on this May.

‘Not if my friends can’t come over’

Facebook said in its announcement, “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. We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.”

‘Play by yourselves’

The social network is opting instead for a collection of local events, where attendees only have to worry about catching COVID-19 from each other, thank you very much. These events, the details of which will be announced later, will involve live-streams and video presentations. We’d also put money on Oculus headsets being using to allow the Zuck to attend in VR.

Facebook, as part of its announcement, is also upping a donation to an organisation in San Jose where F8 is typically held. Usually the donation, aimed at diversifying the tech industry there, involves a cut of conference ticket sales but that’s obviously not going to happen this year. The donation’s supposed to make you go ‘awww…’ — like, in a good way. And, we reckon, it kinda does.