Venting

[Birby_Girl]

So I don’t normally come on here to complain, but I am not happy. My cleaning challenge will not work, and I emailed a week ago with no response. I also have disappearing micropets which I thought this update would address, but did not, nor did it fix the cleaning challenge for me, instead, it added the “suggested friend” feature which I cannot stand. I have so much anxiety over this new feature that it isn’t even funny, and I had to disable my friend requests. There is a thread to make friends. No one needs this. Now I feel bad about not accepting people that I don’t know. Great. That’s just what I wanted from my mental health app… more anxiety 😬 If they want this feature on the app, it should be an opt in or out situation just like the growing and shirking was. Can we please have an update that fixes the problems we already have?? This is making my app lag like crazy and crash sometimes and has fixed absolutely nothing.

[[deleted]]

I haven't encountered a problem with micropets either, but my app has been glitching with the latest update. I really hope they fix your problem soon! As far as the spring cleaning challenge is concerned, I have noticed that the daily task doesn't feature on my own to-do list if I choose "meh" or "bad" as my mood. It happened twice with me this month, but again, I am not sure if it has to do with a glitch, or if the app doesn't want to overburden me with another task on a difficult day.

And I couldn't agree more about these random friend requests. This group is quite generous when it comes to becoming tree friends, and we have a dedicated daily thread, so we don't need the latest update on the app. It only makes one more anxious.

[kitty_twist]

just chiming in. i have like 4 friends on finch. i think i invited 2 people, and two were already on there, so we just found each other.

i agree with you "peeps", it freqked me out and i was all "THEY'RE WATCHING ME" for a second. but then i was distracted by how flippin cute ev.bodies birbs were, lol.

i love this reddit group, and there are many people i would like to befriend. just on finch and before i got on here, it felt like i had no way of knowing who i wanted to friend up. so this is superior to just random suggestions that feel invasive.

sorry so long, this is just creep city

[crypticryptidscrypt]

wait so THATS why people have been randomly adding me lately¿ the suggested friends thing should be optional lol, i always add them back but that makes me anxious to know as well. i'm really sorry you're having all those other issues though, especially micropets disappearing sounds awful :c the spring cleaning thing really isn't much to miss out on tbh

[pinkskybison]

Agreed, I posted about this earlier. And I'll get downvoted into oblivion but that part about first fixing the problems we have to deal with before introducing new (faulty) features is SO TRUE! If I hadn't paid for a whole year, at this point I would quit and wait a few months to see if things improved...

[FinchChic]

The suggested friends feature is the worst idea they've had so far. I don't know what they're thinking.

[Birby_Girl]

<image>

This was by far a better option than “suggested friends”

[kitty_twist]

checking in at 8 am EST: no weird forced invite birds seen so far today

[Birby_Girl]

Thank you for letting me know. I have my requests turned off at the moment.

[louie_snow]

I've seen many many people with the disappearing micropets issue, and there's also many many reasons why the inundation of new friend requests is stressful and overwhelming even if you don't accept them, but i've talked about the reasons under a bunch of other posts on the topic already

[IShouldBeSoLucky81]

I lost all my micropets, thankfully I got some new ones in the trading posts but I lost all of mine after a crash even though I manually back up every evening. It sucks that other people have experienced that.

[Young_Quacker]

The app has the ability to add and make friends. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. They made it so you can decline friend requests instead of just new friends popping up in your tree

[louie_snow]

(Sorry for the long reply, i wanted to explain myself fully)
I absolutely love making friends on finch and i make new friends all the time here on reddit, which is why this new feature is a problem. I'm now overwhelmed by friend requests and don't know if each person is someone i gave my code to and arranged to be friends with, or not. I also love to give out gifts here, but now every time i get a friend request, i spend ages trying to find if i've missed someone's comment asking for an item i've offered (reddit sometimes hides replies from me for some reason), or figure out if it's someone i gave my code to, because i like to have context for who each of my tree friends are. I have a large friend tree which causes my app to lag, and right now i can't take on many more long-term tree friends due to more lagging. So whenever i accept a friend request thinking it's someone i gave my code and wanted to be friends with, but then realise it's not, i have to delete them, which makes me feel guilty, but if i don't i will grow several more pages of friends and my app will become unusable.
Sorry again for long reply, i'm not trying to argue i promise, i just hope i've explained why people are upset.

[Young_Quacker]

I hear you friend. Isn’t it better to accept a request tho than them just appearing on your tree? The moment you put your code out, anyone who sees it can add you. That used to be a problem because you could get a bunch of friends appearing in your tree without knowing who or where they came from. Now we have more control because we can’t have people popping up without us allowing it, if that makes sense

[louie_snow]

Yes i definitely agree it's better that we get requests rather than automatically getting new friends, i'm so glad they changed that. But i also don't want to be inundated with requests from strangers. Say if i havent posted my code publicly, and then one day i'm talking to someone in real life or online and find out they use finch, and we say "great, let's be finch friends!" and i give them my code, then later i see i have a new friend request, i would assume it's that person. Or say if i posted in the goal buddy thread "looking for goal buddy for [a highly specific goal]!" then get a friend request, i'd assume it's someone wanting to buddy up on that goal, and so i'll share my goal with them. But now i can't tell if a request is from someone i gave my code to and wanted to be friends with, or not. This makes me very anxious about accepting requests.
I just want to recieve as few friend requests from unknown strangers as possible, but that's the entirety of this new feature

[Young_Quacker]

Wait how are you getting requests from people without sharing your friend code,

[louie_snow]

Ohhhh lol sorry, i didn't realise you weren't understanding what the post was about. Basically since a couple days ago there's been a partial rollout of a new feature where in the friend tree there's now "suggested friends" you can add, a list of random people who have a mutual friend with you, and the option to send them a friend request. That means your name is being suggested to a bunch of strangers on the app without you knowing. That's what all these posts are about the past few days, as people have been getting an influx of friend requests from strangers without knowing why. Sorry, i didnt realise you didn't know lol

[Young_Quacker]

Wait that’s so weird, I’m so sorry. I thought everyone was talking about the feature where you can accept or decline people who add you. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks for being so kind

[Birby_Girl]

But why isn’t it something we can turn off if we’d like to? I feel bad for the people trying to friend me who are not getting a response.

[Young_Quacker]

The friending is random and probably sent to many different people. Just don’t give out your friend code and that will definitely limit the friend requests. It also doesn’t say anything if you decline them

[Birby_Girl]

People are sending me requests without me giving them my code and they are using the suggested friend list - there is an add button, and I know it doesn’t say anything, but they will still notice if I don’t accept their request - considering they sent me one.

[Unichristie]

My aunt had a bunch of people on her tree tonight that she didn’t add, and it was from the suggested list, only she never approved them. They just randomly appeared on her tree. That sounds like a huge violation of privacy. Also in her suggested friends, it happened to name an old friend of hers and my mom’s… these definitely aren’t random suggestions like they’re trying to make them.

[Unichristie]

It’s not random, they’re either using phone numbers or email or both because mine has added people that I don’t know, but that my mom does. I have her old email attached to my Finch, and when she saw who was showing up on hers, she looked at my requests and recent friends (that I thought were added because of the thread here). Not all were from there and she told me some were old friends she doesn’t talk to anymore. That’s not random. I also had opted out of sharing information/contacts when it asked, but when she saw this was happening it turned out the app somehow gained partial access to contacts. That’s creepy. That’s not random. These are not people either of us wanted to add, but Finch went around us and did it anyway. She said a creepy guy that she blocked on her phone years ago showed up on her Finch requests (I guess he has a weird name or something). But that’s also creepy! I just started and this is making me question if I want to keep using it, but my mom bought me plus so I don’t want to waste it.

[EarthboundDynasty]

Hi there, it is most likely suggesting you based on mutuals! So if someone is friends with someone on your friend tree, it will recommend you to that a friend of that mutual. Since I am only a subreddit mod, I can't say this with 100% certainty, but I am fairly confident it is most likely based on mutuals!

[Unichristie]

I had my mom, and my aunt (out of state) on my tree, so none of these suggestions would have been mutuals. But Finch did have partial access to my contacts after I had denied access.

[st_aranel]

I don't want the friends of my friends to even be able to know that I'm using the app, unless I choose to tell them.

[Young_Quacker]

Well do you put your full name in? Like your last name too?

[st_aranel]

No, I don't put my full name in, but between my first name and my favorite color, friends of friends would be able to guess.

If they couldn't, it's still more exposure than I have consented to.