Facebook Bug Triggers Automatic Friend Requests

Latest Facebook app update caused a strange glitch on the app that resulted in users sending unprompted friend requests. Meta quickly fixed the situation.

App bugs that affect user privacy in some way are more common than people might think. Some bugs are more straightforward, like the one affecting ChatGPT, which led to the leak of personal information and chat logs. But other bugs behave in a much stranger way.

Meta said a bug introduced with their latest update would trigger the app to immediately send a friend request when viewing a user's profile. For example, Facebook has a list of suggested friends, but when users clicked on the recommended profile to get more information, the app immediately sent a friend request.

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

Some users were happy to see this new "feature" as users were immediately alerted if someone clicked on their profile. Others said it was a serious invasion of privacy. Some users are even said to have deleted the app entirely.

The situation wasn't as clear-cut as it might seem. The same friend request was sent if you wanted to see the profile of someone in the comments or when trying to block interaction with a person. Meta says the bug was short-lived and it’s now fixed.