KEY POINTS
- Some Facebook users reported friend requests were automatically being sent.
- The social media giant says the issue has now been resolved.
- It is the latest bug to emerge during Meta's "Year of Efficiency".
Searched for a Facebook profile or browsed your suggested friends recently? You might have unwittingly sent them a friend request.
Some social media users have pointed out online over the past couple of days that Facebook was "automatically" sending requests when doing either of those two things, describing it as "awkward" and "disgraceful".
"As someone with a severe nosiness problem this Facebook auto friend request glitch is very spooky and uncool with me," one user wrote on Twitter.
Meta — the parent company of Facebook, which has 2 billion daily active users — acknowledged the issue on Friday, saying it was a "bug" that had caused the glitch.
“We fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly,” a Meta spokesperson told United States news outlet The Daily Beast.
“We’ve stopped this from happening and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
It is the latest bug to emerge during Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "Year of Efficiency" in which the social media giant has embarked on a cost-cutting spree. In two rounds of layoffs, the most recent in April, thousands of staff were made redundant as the company works towards becoming "a stronger and more nimble organisation".
It follows another glitch in April, where Meta was forced to briefly halt all advertising as some customers complained they were being overcharged for ads.
And in August last year, a "configuration change" saw many Facebook users complaining that their feeds were full of posts from people they didn't know commenting on celebrities' posts.
How to check friend requests you've sent on Facebook
- When using Facebook on a computer, click 'Friends' on the left-hand panel on your homepage
- Click 'Friend requests'
- Then, click 'view sent requests'
