By Steve Hopkins
‘The end of stalking’
A Facebook glitch saw the app auto-send friend requests when users viewed other people’s profiles, in what was a nightmare scenario for some users.
‘Profile-snoopers’ were caught out when Meta fixed a bug and inadvertently created another problem. It dispatched friend requests to any profiles users had viewed.
Some users were amused by the glitch, calling it the “funniest thing” the platform had ever done, while others, who were perhaps looking at profiles they shouldn’t have been, labelled it “embarrassing” and “awkward”.
Meta explained what happened to The Daily Beast: “We fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly.”
The spokesperson added: “We’ve stopped this from happening and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
One user posted a short video on Twitter of the glitch in action, with the friend request being automatically sent just a second after the user clicked a profile.
It was also talked about on TikTok where one user called it, “the end of stalking”.
On Twitter, one person wrote that it was the “wrong night to go through my year book and stalk”. Another added, “That’s it guys. See you in another life.”
Some Facebook users have since said that the automatic friend requests sent had since disappeared.
Anyone still concerned about making friends with users they would rather not, can sort the situation at facebook.com/friends. From there, click ‘Friend Requests’ in the left-hand tab followed by ‘View send requests’ to review the pending requests.
