- A bizarre Facebook bug is sending friend request alerts without user input.
- The friend requests are sent just by viewing another profile.
- Meta has yet to acknowledge the issue.
Yikes. If you’re in the habit of stalking profiles on Facebook you might want to respect people’s privacy for a little bit. According to many reports from disgruntled users across social media, Facebook is sending unintended friend requests to other users just by looking at their profiles.
There are plenty of reports on Facebook and Twitter with users complaining about the bug, but we had to test it for ourselves to be sure. Turns out that it’s absolutely real. Check it out in action in the video below and take note of my taps. You’ll notice that while I clicked on my wonderful colleague Hadlee’s profile (look, I don’t use Facebook otherwise we’d already be pals, okay), there was no corresponding tap on the “Add friend” button, it just sent it automatically. Hadlee also confirmed that he received my friend request.