Following an embarrassing glitch on Facebook, numerous users have chosen to deactivate their accounts. The glitch exposed individuals who had been engaging in “stalking” behavior on the platform, causing a wave of deactivations.
The glitch automatically sent friend requests to the profiles of those whom users had been snooping on, resulting in a frantic rush to cancel the requests. Warnings about the glitch circulated on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, but many users were already too late, as they found themselves bombarding school friends, ex-partners, and colleagues with awkward friend requests.
One user said: ‘This is a cool new Facebook fact. If you check someone’s Facebook that you’re not friends with, it automatically sends a friend request to you. It’s true because I’m now friends with my ex-husband’s wife.’
Another Facebook user wrote: ‘Got a friend request from an ex – thanks Facebook for letting me know they are still obsessed with me.’
The incident left some users with racing hearts as they hurriedly checked if they had been caught. Facebook issued an apology for the issue, attributing it to an app update, and advised users to review their activity logs and cancel any pending friend requests.
Social media platforms, such as Twitter and TikTok, were abuzz with posts about the glitch, with some users finding humor in the situation, dubbing it the “funniest thing Facebook has ever done,” while others labeled it embarrassing and awkward.
One user said: ‘Too sodding late. I can’t show my face ever again. I want to die’.
Another wrote: ‘Deactivated my Facebook because I can’t remember whether or not I was stalking people when it was glitching and requesting them as friends.’
A spokesperson for Meta explained the issue 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 spokesperson said.
Affected users also took to Twitter and TikTok, with one individual proclaiming that this incident marked the “end of stalking.” Another user expressed the unfortunate timing of the glitch, stating, “It’s the wrong night to go through my yearbook and stalk.”
Additionally, one user highlighted the potential embarrassment of receiving a friend request notification from an ex or an enemy whom they had been stalking. Some users reported that the unwanted friend requests had disappeared from their accounts.
However, for those concerned about the technical defect, Facebook provided guidance on how to review pending friend requests through the “Friend Requests” section on the website.
Glitches of this nature are not uncommon on social media platforms, often occurring when engineers introduce changes or adjustments to the user experience.
Last year, another highly humiliating glitch on Facebook resulted in user feeds being inundated with posts from strangers sharing content from celebrity pages. For instance, memes from the official Facebook page of US rapper Eminem suddenly appeared on users’ homepages.
This problem seemed to arise from a technical issue within Facebook’s internal systems that determined which posts would appear in users’ news feeds.