Facebook Bug That Automatically Sent Friend Requests to Other Users Resolved: Report

Facebook accidentally informed users when a user was visiting their profile, by sending them a friend request, according to a report.

Written by David Delima, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 15 May 2023 18:37 IST

Facebook Bug That Automatically Sent Friend Requests to Other Users Resolved: Report

Photo Credit: Reuters

One user shared a video recording of the bug sending a friend request to a stranger

Highlights

Facebook users complained of the automatic friend request bug on Friday
Users who visited other Facebook users' accounts automatically added them
Meta reportedly acknowledged the glitch and said it had been resolved

Facebook was reportedly affected by a bug that automatically sent a friend request to other users, an issue that the company says it has resolved. Users recently took to Twitter to complain that the social networking service was sending requests to users immediately upon visiting their profile. The issue was spotted by several users, weeks after the company laid off over 11,000 employees, or 13 percent of its workforce — mostly comprising engineers and adjacent tech teams in its second round of layoffs this year.

On Friday, users began complaining that Facebook was automatically sending a friend request to a user as soon as you visited their profile. Twitter user Bavid Mcjavid (@bavidmcjavid) shared a screen recording of the glitch that shows the Facebook app selecting the Add friend button without any user input, forcing the user to manually cancel the friend request.

Fb is legit adding randoms if you click on their profile.

Got a screen record here.@facebook wtf?!#Facebook #glitch #facebookadd pic.twitter.com/S7lxPhQU6F
— Bavid Mcjavid (@bavidmcjavid) May 12, 2023

Several other users on Twitter complained of the same glitch, and one user stated that every person they "stalked" — viewing a profile privately without informing the user — automatically received a request from them. Another user also said they were experiencing the same issue, adding that it was the "wrong night" to go through their yearbook to stalk other users.

Shortly after the glitch was detected, Majavid tweeted that the issue seemed to have been resolved. Meanwhile, Meta shared a statement with The Daily Beast, revealing that it had fixed a bug that caused the issue and apologised for the issue.

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“We fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly. We've stopped this from happening and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused,” a Meta spokesperson told the Daily Beast.

The glitch that caused Facebook to send requests to other users upon visiting their profile comes around a month after Meta announced its second round of layoffs this year. As part of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "Year of Efficiency", the company is prepared to lay of thousands of employees and cut costs using various methods — including lower bonus payouts for some employees — by the end of the year.

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Further reading: Facebook, Bugs, Meta, Privacy

David Delima

Email David Delima

As a writer on technology with Gadgets 360, David Delima is interested in open-source technology, cybersecurity, consumer privacy, and loves to read and write about how the Internet works. David can be contacted via email at DavidD@ndtv.com, on Twitter at @DxDavey, and Mastodon at mstdn.social/@delima. More