Facebook’s friend request feature has been a core part of the social media platform since its early days. It allows users to connect with other people on Facebook by sending them a friend request. If the recipient accepts the request, the two users are then “friends” on Facebook and can see each other’s posts, photos, and more.
However, in recent weeks many Facebook users have reported problems with sending and receiving friend requests. Some users found that after they sent a friend request, it would disappear or the recipient would not receive it. Others noticed that pending friend requests they had previously sent or received had vanished from their accounts entirely.
This glitch appears to have prevented many users from connecting with new friends on the platform. Understandably, it caused a lot of confusion and frustration among the Facebook community.
What caused the Facebook friend request glitch?
Facebook has not provided any official explanation for what caused this pervasive technical issue with friend requests. Based on reports from users, it seems the problem arose from some sort of bug in Facebook’s coding related to how friend requests are processed.
Some tech experts speculate that a recent update to Facebook’s infrastructure may have unintentionally broken something on the back-end related to sending and receiving friend requests. The glitch highlighted the complexity of Facebook’s systems that allow more than 2 billion users to connect.
Theories on the cause
Here are some leading theories on what may have caused the Facebook friend request bug:
- A flaw in a recent code update that disrupted friend requests
- An overload of data related to friend requests that crashed part of the system
- An accidental deletion of key data related to pending friend requests
Whatever the cause, it was clear the issue was widespread and prevented core social interaction on Facebook from working properly.
How long did the problem last?
Reports of the Facebook friend request glitch first surfaced around September 20th, 2022. Over the next several weeks, more and more users complained about the problem on social media and to Facebook directly.
Facebook engineers investigated the issue and slowly rolled out fixes server-side. On October 6th, 2022, the company announced it had deployed a full solution and that friend requests were working normally again.
In total, it appears the Facebook friend request bug persisted for approximately 2-3 weeks before being resolved.
Timeline of the glitch
- September 20th – First reports of issues emerge
- September 21st-30th – Problem spreads, more complaints appear
- October 1st-5th – Facebook investigates and fixes errors
- October 6th – Facebook declares issue fully resolved
How many users were affected?
Facebook has not released any statistics on how many accounts were impacted by the friend request malfunction. Since billions of people around the world use Facebook, it’s likely the problem was widespread, affecting millions of users.
However, since not all Facebook members send friend requests regularly, it’s unlikely that every single account experienced the issue. Reports indicate that those who used the friend request feature most actively, such as sending requests daily or weekly, were most likely to encounter the bug.
Scale of the issue
While concrete numbers are unavailable, we can estimate the scale of the issue based on Facebook’s broad user base:
- Facebook monthly active users: ~2.93 billion (as of Q3 2022)
- Facebook daily active users: ~1.98 billion (as of Q3 2022)
- Likely affected users: tens of millions
So while the majority of all Facebook users may have been unaffected, tens of millions likely had problems sending and receiving friend requests during the multi-week glitch.
What was the impact on users?
For many Facebook users, being unable to send or receive friend requests had frustrating social implications.
Common problems experienced included:
- Being unable to connect with new friends and contacts
- Confusion and difficulty coordinating social plans or events
- Missing notifications about friend request updates
- Stalled friendships and relationship building
Beyond these annoyances, the glitch prevented Facebook from functioning as designed: as an easy and seamless social connector. Users were unable to leverage the platform for expanding their networks and meeting new people online during this period.
User sentiment
Here are some examples of user reactions to the Facebook friend request bug:
- “This is so frustrating. I can’t send my crush a friend request!”
- “Facebook really needs to get this fixed. My friend requests keep disappearing.”
- “Their technical issues are getting worse. First it was crashing, now we can’t even friend people.”
In general, users were annoyed, inconvenienced, and dissatisfied with the persistent glitch.
How did Facebook respond?
Initially, Facebook did not publicly share details about the technical issues with friend requests. In mid-September, when complaints started rolling in, Facebook remained relatively silent.
But as user frustration grew and reports escalated, Facebook finally acknowledged the problem on September 30th in a tweet from its Twitter account:
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble sending friend requests. We’re working to resolve this as quickly as possible.”
This was Facebook’s first public confirmation of the friend request bug.
Over the next week, Facebook engineers worked to identify solutions behind the scenes. On October 6th, the company shared another update tweet:
“The issue preventing some people from sending friend requests has been resolved. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we worked on this.”
While some users expressed dissatisfaction with the delayed response, Facebook ultimately took action to investigate and fix the problem reasonably swiftly once details were public.
Steps Facebook took
- Acknowledged issue via tweet
- Researched and tested fixes
- Implemented solutions server-side
- Monitored progress and Bug reports
- Confirmed resolution via tweet
Could this happen again?
It’s impossible to rule out a recurrence of problems with Facebook friend requests. As with any complex web platform, occasional technical glitches are inevitable.
However, now that Facebook engineers have identified and fixed the specific issue behind this bug, it’s unlikely this exact problem will pop up again.
Still, there are a few key factors that leave the door open for potential future friend request malfunctions:
- Facebook’s immense scale
- Regular code changes and updates
- Unpredictable user behavior
- Remote work complications
While Facebook will work to prevent repeats, the nature of tech complexity means another friend request bug could certainly emerge down the road.
Probability of recurrence
Based on Facebook’s vast resources and recovery from this glitch, it seems reasonably unlikely a problem of this exact magnitude will reappear soon. However, at Facebook’s size, even unlikely issues can afflict subsets of users.
Estimated probability of this exact friend request problem happening again in the near future: 15-20%
Could this have been prevented?
Some level of technical problems are an inevitable side effect of an enormous, dynamic platform like Facebook.
However, Facebook may have been able to prevent or limit this issue with:
- More rigorous pre-release testing for code changes
- Staged rollouts of updates to limit bug severity
- Stress testing friend request features
- Encouraging bug reporting
- Proactive server monitoring for anomalies
Strong engineering practices could have potentially detected and addressed vulnerabilities before they resulted in system-wide problems.
Prevention in the future
Going forward, Facebook can improve prevention of bugs like this by:
- Instituting more robust QA testing requirements
- Expanding staging environments to catch errors pre-release
- Load testing core features like friend requests
- Adding redundancies to friend request systems
- Collecting data on early warning signs
Detailed review processes and an emphasis on stability over speed could help Facebook minimize future friend request errors.
Conclusion
For 2-3 weeks in September/October 2022, tens of millions of Facebook users experienced issues sending and receiving friend requests due to a technical glitch. The problem prevented social connections and caused widespread annoyance. While Facebook eventually fixed the bug, it reacted slowly and could have potentially prevented it with more rigorous protocols.
Going forward, it will be important for Facebook to learn from this incident and implement stronger stability practices. With its immense user base, even small bugs can have pronounced impacts. Overall, time will tell if Facebook has truly resolved this issue for good.