Don’t want to approve that new friend request because you don’t know the person well enough? Rather than clicking “Ignore” as was previously the case, Facebook is switching the button to “Not Now” and simply hiding the request indefinitely. Users can then choose to go back to those friend requests at a later date by clicking on “View Hidden Requests” on their requests page.
The shift is for a number of reasons. First, ignoring a friend request sometimes resulted in the person who made the request seeing that they can request a friend again. The result was that the user would once again see the ability to request the friendship. Now, if you click on “Not Now”, the person who you ignored will see “Awaiting Friend Confirmation” anytime they visit your profile. This is a relatively significant move for Facebook has the friend rejection has long played a significant role in social interactions among users.
If a person receives a request from someone they don’t know, Facebook will now give you the opportunity to report that individual. By letting Facebook know that they don’t know the individual, it will prevent the user from sending friend requests in the future. The improvement is an attempt at preventing abuse, especially as Facebook has seen a rise of spam accounts created in recent months.
Funny how Facebook has NO REGARD for what they put people through when they can't access their accounts (for MANY various reason), and all of a sudden they get all "touchy-feely". Give me an effin break!
Comment by Gene Lyons — September 17, 2010 @ 5:32 pm
I'm sure it causes new problems. The times Facebook connected only "real life" friends are over.
Comment by Manfred — September 17, 2010 @ 6:27 pm
facebook, the social non social network.. we are all waiting for a new service, and forget this one as we forgot myspace
Comment by paul — September 17, 2010 @ 6:49 pm
This idea by itself isn't HORRIBLE, but in the past, Facebook still allowed people with Friend requests pending to view any wall postings on the target profile that were allowed to that user's Friends (but they could not Like or comment on them).
Will Facebook change this, so that people can't send a Friend request, and stalk their posts even though the target user doesn't want to Friend them just yet (and is either unwilling to "passively block" or is unaware that explicitly marking that user as someone they don't know is tantamount to blocking)?
Comment by Zarggg — September 17, 2010 @ 6:57 pm
Yes, now it's time for YOU to be responsible for yourself to accept only real life friends instead of having FB think for you. What a concept. Personal Responsibility!
Comment by @unshavedcommie — September 18, 2010 @ 3:24 am
Are you serious? It's up to us to decide if our wall posts are shown to strangers, not FB. Get with the program!
Comment by @unshavedcommie — September 18, 2010 @ 3:26 am
If you're dumb enough to have your privacy setting set so that people who friend request you have access to your information then it's your own fault. Not sure why people feel that it's FB's responsibility to be responsible for the information you put out there. They've given you the tools to block your information, use them. If you posted it for others to see and you didn't make your privacy settings strong enough that's your fault… not Facebooks!
Comment by IrinaB — September 18, 2010 @ 8:57 pm
The problem is, that most people are not aware that when they put someone "on hold", their updates are still shown on that persons wall. (according to their privacy settings).
Cyber-Stalkers can put their requests into lists to track all obtainable informations about that person even if they are not accepted. For example they could see if someone new is befriended by the stalked person or if the person is attending a new event. (this is an open information which doesn't have its own privacy option, hiding your normal wall posts cannot prevent someone from tracking this information once a connection is opened)
Without the ignoring option the only way to prevent this is blocking the person entirely and how do you tell if a certain person is a possible threat/fake profile?
Comment by @ignazessl — September 19, 2010 @ 11:13 am
I think many users would feel better protected if by default the privacy options are set to exposing your page only to friends.
RE: "Rather than clicking “Ignore” as was previously the case, Facebook is switching the button to “Not Now”" – so to ignore a person I need to first click "not now" and them go to my hold list and ignore him?
Comment by dissertations5 — September 20, 2010 @ 8:37 am
Interesting concept that could be helpful.
Personally I've sent a couple friend requests to the same person not knowing they had clicked "Ignore" merely because they would pop up on the Suggestions page, thinking "Didn't I request them before?" And I've clicked "Ignore" a few times myself on those I had no idea who they were or had no interest in or no one in common.
Now all we need is for FB to stop suggesting people again after we click the little "X" because we have no intention of friending them ever.
Comment by bam — September 20, 2010 @ 4:27 pm
[...] clear how this worked, we’ve written about this feature in the past. However with Facebook changing the way friend requests work last week, it appears that Facebook has in essence created a follow feature. MG Siegler first [...]
Pingback by Ignored Facebook Friend Requests Can View Some Of Your Updates — September 21, 2010 @ 11:04 am
Now FB is threatening to shut down our accounts if we click on "add as friend" to a person that FB suggests to us! And what about someone who FORGOT they knew me years ago, and reports me for sending them a friend request? This is getting really worrisome.
Comment by @ozarknature — September 21, 2010 @ 10:55 pm
Call me dumb but i can't found that option. Where is it?
Comment by Dss — October 1, 2010 @ 1:15 pm