SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Goodreads Author Friend Requests

- If you get a Friend Request from a GR Author (that you don't know) and Ignored the Request, you may need to check your Friend List or the Author profile to make sure you are not friends with them.

I had "Ignored" two friend requests from strangers I haven't interacted with on GR. Today, I found out that they were my "friends". I believe it's a glitch with GR Author profiles.

- You can sort your friend list by date added. That's the easiest way to check your list and make sure there are no strangers added to your list.

- You will have to "Remove/Unfriend" the author Twice. The first time you remove/unfriend the profile, it will automatically be added to your friend list. Second removal seems to do the trick.

I plan to check my friend list a few times and make sure there's no unusual add-ons.

You can block an author. On browser, the option is at the bottom of the author profile page.

I believe this is a recent glitch in the system. I'm not sure when the problem will be fixed. I did send in a report to GR.

How frustrating! Thanks for the info

I've been having a problem with friend request as well for the past couple of days. The already approved request keeps coming back, over and over.

Last time I clicked 'ignore' instead, trusting, that as we are already friends now, it wouldn't remove that.

Hasn't showed up since. And the 'friendship' hasn't been removed.

They are not an author, though, nor am I. A frustrating bug none the less.

Same Jemppu. I rejected a friend request who immediately became a friend, Not an author, just a person who had 438 more friends than books. And she had less than 450 friends...

(I edited the thread title, removed "Author".)

Thanks for posting this Eva! I should've, but I've been both busy and lazy lately.

The mod account has had what Jemppu describes, and indeed the only way I could make it stop was to click on ignore instead of accept. And since they were already friends of mod at that point, after several accepts, nothing happened except that the requests stopped coming.

I know that GR is working on this, so let's hope they fix it soon!

One GR Help question for this bug: https://help.goodreads.com/s/question...

Jemppu wrote: "Last time I clicked 'ignore' instead, trusting, that as we are already friends now, it wouldn't remove that.

Hasn't showed up since. And the 'friendship' hasn't been removed"

You're lucky... mine are still coming and coming again after clicking on "Ignore" too.
Oh, good grief😓😅

For new, on the app, the badge for the friend request kept showing for days but the request was never there after the initial accept! It was a bit tedious, but seems to be done now.

Makes you wonder how some people are exploiting this bug. Thanks for sharing!

Oh it's not just me then LOL. I've been having this problem too. Yes I found the unfriending twice did the trick. Hope it gets sorted soon!

Interesting. I have a handful of "friends" - all authors I think - whom I couldn't remember adding but just assumed I must have done.

Mind you, they haven't exactly bothered me so I hadn't done anything about it.

Just noticed that the bug also randomly adds people to top friends, and some of them have to be changed twice before it takes. And even then they might be added again later. So I guess check your top friends?

Also this fun new thing: https://help.goodreads.com/s/question...

(People are unable to send real friend requests while being bombarded with tons of fake ones.)

LOL! Figures.

ugh this is just now hitting me and it is aaannnnnnoyiing

I've been affected by all of these friend problems since Saturday. I sent a help email to GR on Sunday. They're "aware of the issue."

And so am I as it's still an issue. I've also had this twist - I had unfriended someone and within 15 minutes, GR notified me that that particular person is "now my friend."

I believe the problem is different depending on what browser & platform. I use a web browser on my devices: laptops (windows), smartphones + tablets (android). From the responses, I'm guessing that there are different bugs depending on browser type, device (OS) and app.

By this point, I figured most know to avoid the app & use a browser with good ad blockers/etc.

For this particular problem, I only had the "auto friend" after ignore/decline from the author profiles. The regular ones were not immediately added to my friend's list.

I went to the author profile of the new & unwanted friends and removed them as a friend. I had to remove the "friend" twice and the second time worked.

I've had several different things happening on the same device/browser/profile. Don't know about the original problem, as I'm using the mod account, and the mod account doesn't ignore friend requests, but all the other ones have happened at least once.

Woman Reading wrote: "I've also had this twist - I had unfriended someone and within 15 minutes, GR notified me that that particular person is "now my friend."

Same.

Thanks for this, Soo. Was losing my mind trying to reject a robot-catfish friend, but didn't think to remove them TWICE. Wow, cool glitch.

I don’t know. I use the app almost exclusively and the only problem I had is that the badge and notification that I had a friend request (a legitimate one) wouldn’t clear. It disappeared after a few days though.

Im having this happen to my account just now, its been going on for two weeks or so and its driving me nuts.

I accept a request and they become a follower and the request is pending, afterwards the friend request returns and i accept but it keeps doing the same thing.

Help!!!??

You should contact Goodreads support so that they can tell you they've added you to the list of people who've reported this bug and continue not fixing it :/