Change: "Friend Request Limit"

[apo]

ISSUE: About a week ago I tried to add someone as a friend, and I got this message: "It looks like you've sent too many friend invites. To prevent spam, you'll have to wait before you can invite more friends. Please note that other players can still add you during this time."

SITUATION: I've probably sent out less than 10 friend requests during the entire month of March. I usually send less than 5 friend requests a month. I've probably never sent more than 20. I'm not a spammer. Most of my friend requests are sent to people I've played matchmaking games with, or someone I already have mutual friends with, though a small number are sent for TF2 trading purposes. In my nearly 11 years on Steam I've never had this issue before. It's been a week, and I am still unable to send friend requests.
The only reason I can think that I would have had this restriction placed on my account is that I had a friend request rejected by a user who is (presumably) a big target for scammers/spambots. Somewhat recently, Valve has started handing out community bans for leaving profile comments related to the trading function that is part of their platform, presumably because of bots/scammers misusing this function, but innocent users get caught in the crossfire. To avoid being caught by this, if I want to discuss a trade with someone, I will add them on Steam to ask if they would consider [some sort of variable.] I have never had an issue while doing this until now. If someone rejects my request or tells me they don't want to negotiate on a trade, I will just move on. I have no malicious intent towards users that I add for trading purposes. You can check my backpack_tf profile to see that during my ~10 years of being involved with TF2 trading, that I've NEVER had any negative relations with other traders- quite the opposite, I've had PLENTY of positive interactions.

I tried reaching out to Steam Support, and I was met with a pretty unsatisfactory response.


STEAM RESPONSE: (partially redacted)
It sounds like you have reached a rate limit for adding friends too often.

You will need to wait to send additional invites. Keep in mind that invites rejected by other users contribute more to this limitation occurring.

In the meantime, you can use the invite link for your account to give to your friends to be easily added.

Pt 2:
Steam Support is unable to disclose details regarding how long the invite cooldown lasts. We can only suggest periodically trying again to send invites.

In the meantime, you'll still be able to accept invites from others.

If you wish to share an opinion, suggestion, or idea with the community as well, please visit the Suggestions/Ideas section of the Steam Discussion forums.

This forum is regularly read by Valve's development team.

Since there's not much more that I can say or do to be of help with this particular issue, I am going to close this help request.

-

(okay, I'll make a post here in the forums then, like I was suggested to do by Steam Support- even though I expect it to do absolutely nothing, worth a shot I guess..)

-

MY THOUGHTS: I appreciate that Valve is adding anti-spam measures, as I used to get 10+ scammer spambots sending me friend requests every day to try and hijack my account to try and steal my TF2 items. In the past (but not currently,) there were even scammers that tried to use my reputation in the TF2 trading community to scam users. They would impersonate my profile and try to scam others. In response to this I created and featured a guide on my profile for how to detect impersonators, and hopefully avoid being scammed. I would also periodically check on these impersonator accounts and add the people on their friends list (and/or post a comment on their profile,) letting them know not to trust the impersonator, as there would likely be a scam attenpt.
So I get it, scammers and spammers suck. I hate them and have dealt with plenty of them in the past, and as of late it appears that I get maybe 1 spambot trying to add me per month. So, it appears that the system in place is stopping plenty of spambots. In order for the system to function, I understand that Valve cannot provide potential spammers with information on how to bypass their restrictions. HOWEVER, when innocent users are punished for no apparent reason, this becomes an incredibly frustrating service issue. When it comes to service issues, I agree with GabeN's thoughts on the matter.

SOLUTION: Sadly, I don't have a specific implementation that would prevent spammers from spamming without punishing innocent users. But the solution would involve tweaking how profiles get this restriction, and possibly tweaking the length of said restriction. I've seen reports of legitimate users having this restriction in place for over a month, and that is extremely saddening.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by apo:

Change: "Friend Request Limit"

ISSUE: About a week ago I tried to add someone as a friend, and I got this message: "It looks like you've sent too many friend invites. To prevent spam, you'll have to wait before you can invite more friends. Please note that other players can still add you during this time."

SITUATION: I've probably sent out less than 10 friend requests during the entire month of March. I usually send less than 5 friend requests a month. I've probably never sent more than 20. I'm not a spammer. Most of my friend requests are sent to people I've played matchmaking games with, or someone I already have mutual friends with, though a small number are sent for TF2 trading purposes. In my nearly 11 years on Steam I've never had this issue before. It's been a week, and I am still unable to send friend requests.
The only reason I can think that I would have had this restriction placed on my account is that I had a friend request rejected by a user who is (presumably) a big target for scammers/spambots. Somewhat recently, Valve has started handing out community bans for leaving profile comments related to the trading function that is part of their platform, presumably because of bots/scammers misusing this function, but innocent users get caught in the crossfire. To avoid being caught by this, if I want to discuss a trade with someone, I will add them on Steam to ask if they would consider [some sort of variable.] I have never had an issue while doing this until now. If someone rejects my request or tells me they don't want to negotiate on a trade, I will just move on. I have no malicious intent towards users that I add for trading purposes. You can check my backpack_tf profile to see that during my ~10 years of being involved with TF2 trading, that I've NEVER had any negative relations with other traders- quite the opposite, I've had PLENTY of positive interactions.

I tried reaching out to Steam Support, and I was met with a pretty unsatisfactory response.


STEAM RESPONSE: (partially redacted)
It sounds like you have reached a rate limit for adding friends too often.

You will need to wait to send additional invites. Keep in mind that invites rejected by other users contribute more to this limitation occurring.

In the meantime, you can use the invite link for your account to give to your friends to be easily added.

Pt 2:
Steam Support is unable to disclose details regarding how long the invite cooldown lasts. We can only suggest periodically trying again to send invites.

In the meantime, you'll still be able to accept invites from others.

If you wish to share an opinion, suggestion, or idea with the community as well, please visit the Suggestions/Ideas section of the Steam Discussion forums.

This forum is regularly read by Valve's development team.

Since there's not much more that I can say or do to be of help with this particular issue, I am going to close this help request.

-

(okay, I'll make a post here in the forums then, like I was suggested to do by Steam Support- even though I expect it to do absolutely nothing, worth a shot I guess..)

-

MY THOUGHTS: I appreciate that Valve is adding anti-spam measures, as I used to get 10+ scammer spambots sending me friend requests every day to try and hijack my account to try and steal my TF2 items. In the past (but not currently,) there were even scammers that tried to use my reputation in the TF2 trading community to scam users. They would impersonate my profile and try to scam others. In response to this I created and featured a guide on my profile for how to detect impersonators, and hopefully avoid being scammed. I would also periodically check on these impersonator accounts and add the people on their friends list (and/or post a comment on their profile,) letting them know not to trust the impersonator, as there would likely be a scam attenpt.
So I get it, scammers and spammers suck. I hate them and have dealt with plenty of them in the past, and as of late it appears that I get maybe 1 spambot trying to add me per month. So, it appears that the system in place is stopping plenty of spambots. In order for the system to function, I understand that Valve cannot provide potential spammers with information on how to bypass their restrictions. HOWEVER, when innocent users are punished for no apparent reason, this becomes an incredibly frustrating service issue. When it comes to service issues, I agree with GabeN's thoughts on the matter.

SOLUTION: Sadly, I don't have a specific implementation that would prevent spammers from spamming without punishing innocent users. But the solution would involve tweaking how profiles get this restriction, and possibly tweaking the length of said restriction. I've seen reports of legitimate users having this restriction in place for over a month, and that is extremely saddening.

It was added back in 2020 mainly because people can't stop getting their accounts hijacked and the hijackers would spam out friend requests to get more potential victims.

Every account is treated the same regarding this and that's why everyone now has to deal with the additional restrictions, just like all other restrictions.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/2299597907734477316/?tscn=1591660294#c2299597907734515946

[apo]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by apo:

Change: "Friend Request Limit"

[...]

It was added back in 2020 mainly because people can't stop getting their accounts hijacked and the hijackers would spam out friend requests to get more potential victims.

Every account is treated the same regarding this and that's why everyone now has to deal with the additional restrictions, just like all other restrictions.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/2299597907734477316/?tscn=1591660294#c2299597907734515946

:winterbunny2023:

First, thanks for your response.

Yes, I've seen this thread while researching the issue- I was going to try to contact the OP to get their feedback on the topic, (like how long it took, and if they seemed to face the issue repeatedly after it was removed, etc.) but I noticed that they haven't played any games on that account since 2021, so they would probably never even see a comment I left on their profile, as they've been inactive for years.

Also, when you say that each user is treated the same, has this changed? I saw a report (which was from you) that this restriction varies per account, with some having the restriction for 7 days, and others having the restriction for up to 30. You also mentioned that some people would get a block after 1 friend request, and others after 30, so it doesn't seem like all users are treated the same.

link to comment: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3839927819746820807/#c3839927819746972400

Either way, this issue is incredibly frustrating to not only me, but also other users. I appreciate that Valve is trying to fix the spammer issue (which was awful many years ago.) But to be honest, I'd rather deal with receiving 20 spam requests a day compared to being banned from sending friend requests after sending only a small handful.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

1 week up to 1 month usually depends on the rate at which they were sent out and how many more times during the initial cooldown you trigger another.

It is usually the rate at which you request that may trigger it faster. Kinda like spamming requests 5x in a couple minutes.

Most people won't get the lowered rate limit.

[William Shakesman]

Clearly the algorithm they use for the limit could use some work if it's catching such a modest use case such as this as spam.

[apo]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

1 week up to 1 month usually depends on the rate at which they were sent out and how many more times during the initial cooldown you trigger another.

It is usually the rate at which you request that may trigger it faster. Kinda like spamming requests 5x in a couple minutes.

Most people won't get the lowered rate limit.

:winterbunny2023:

hmm, this must be it then, since, there were 3 users that were advertising that they wanted to sell some TF2 items. I sent out a friend request to each of them, probably in a span of 10 minutes? iirc it was on the 3rd request that I noticed the restriction. (also I think I tried to add them from my phone- which probably was connected to a VPN at the time, which I assume may have made me look more suspicious?) I understand why an automated system might flag behavior such as this, but that doesn't make it less frustrating from a legitimate user's perspective.

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Clearly the algorithm they use for the limit could use some work if it's catching such a modest use case such as this as spam.

Agreed! To be safe and get this restriction removed reliably, now I must wait at least 30 days before sending another request. I've seen information stating that if I try to send a request while I'm still blocked, it resets the cooldown.. meaning that if I try and add someone on day 29 and my cooldown is 30 days, I'd need to wait another whole month before the restriction is removed... :/
As another precaution, once the restriction is removed, I'll only try and add people I've played with- and never send friend requests to chat with other traders.. which is a little sad for me, because TF2 trading used to be a big hobby of mine..

[William Shakesman]

3 in 10 minutes can't be THAT unusual. TF2 and CS plays 10-16 people per round.

[apo]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

3 in 10 minutes can't be THAT unusual. TF2 and CS plays 10-16 people per round.

When determining this restriction, I'm not sure if Valve takes into consideration wether or not you've played with a user recently. Sending 3 friend requests to players that you were in a game with might not apply a restriction, at least I would hope it wouldn't. I'm going to operate off the assumption that sending friend requests to players that you've played with recently are not weighted heavily in this algorithm.

To be completely fair and honest, the people I was trying to add were TF2 players/traders who were advertising their items for sale on backpack_tf (3rd party website where people advertise TF2 items for trade.)
This means that they were not people I had ever played with. So to Valve it probably looks like I'm a bot sending a bunch of requests to players I don't know, who own valuable items. I'm going to operate off the assumption that requests like these are weighted heavily in this algorithm.

I don't expect anyone at Valve to confirm or deny these suspicions, but I would have to imagine it's somewhat true, or else I feel like this issue would be more widespread than what I've seen from my research on the topic.