Facebook Spooky Request Bug
Have you stalked a Facebook profile or browsed suggested friends recently? If you have, then you might have unknowingly sent them a friend request.
Social media users pointed out online over the past few days that the platform was sending requests automatically when searching for a profile or browsing suggesting requests. They described it as awkward and disgraceful.
Some people deactivated their accounts because of embarrassment. Imagine stalking your crush’s profile or browsing your ex’s new girlfriend/boyfriend and all of a sudden, they received your friend request. How mortified can you be?
The Spooky Glitch
This auto friend request glitch is spooky and uncool, especially if you have a nosiness problem.
Facebook did acknowledge the issue. In a statement to the Daily Beast:
“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.”
The platform does not let users see who has viewed their profiles. Thus, strangers can just view your public stories without you learning their identities. You can look at your ex’s stories or co-workers without them knowing that you are stalking them.
But with the bug, they might have an idea.
Full of Bugs
Facebook is no stranger to bugs. Last month, its ad system went haywire. It overcharged customers. They wasted money on ads that didn’t work. Some advertisers claimed that Facebook charged them for ads that no one saw. But Meta denied it at first.
Reports also emerged that the company charged some advertisers more than what they agreed to pay. Although the company denied it, it stopped showing ads on part of its network. The most annoying thing is that it didn’t communicate with its millions of customers.
After a while, though, the company confirmed a bug that allowed those issues to happen. It promised to refund its customers but it only shared a little about what really went wrong.
It happened days after it started its third round of layoffs. Thousands of people were out of jobs. The job cuts affected teams for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Some people working in the company’s Reality Labs division were also let go.
Last week, the company had to resolve another issue involving Facebook ads with hacked pages containing links to malware.
The scammers pretended to be Meta through paid-for Facebook ads that contained links to malware. The ads were spotted by a social media consultant, Mat Navarra. He wondered why a certain ad was approved when it contained links that tricked users to download nefarious tools.
The ad had a link to a malware-infected site. People wondered by Facebook allowed it to be promoted as a paid-for sponsored ad.
Facebook launched a verification program in a bid to boost account protection and protect users against scammers. If you want better security for your account, you will have to pay $11.99 a month.
Some people claimed that the bugs arising on Facebook could be the result of massive layoffs.
