Facebook to Cut Down on 'Now Connected on Messenger' Alerts

When you become friends with someone on Facebook, an annoying 'You Are Now Connected On Messenger' alert is sent. The company says it will start scaling back these alerts for those users that never open these alerts to start chatting.

The company has realised it was being too pushy when it sent alerts for new friends joining your list. Facebook said that it is working to make these notifications more useful and send fewer of them, TechCrunch has reported.

"We've found that many people have appreciated getting a notification when a friend joins Messenger. That said, we are working to make these notifications even more useful by employing machine learning to send fewer of them over time to people who enjoy getting them less. We appreciate all and any feedback that people send our way, so please keep it coming because it helps us make the product better," a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.

It will use machine learning to understand which user does not like the alerts and based on past behaviour will stop sending some of them.

Separately, Facebook acknowledged Thursday a software glitch that changed the settings of some 14 million users, potentially making some posts public even if they were intended to be private.

The news marked the latest in a series of privacy embarrassments for the world's biggest social network, which has faced a firestorm over the hijacking of personal data on tens of millions of users and more recently for disclosures on data-sharing deals with smartphone makers.

Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said in a statement that the company recently "found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts."

Facebook said this affected users posting between May 18 and May 27 as it was implementing a new way to share some items such as photos.

Written with agency inputs