Too Many Friends?

Today I was going through the guest list for our upcoming Leap Year Game Night party, and I noticed that I wasn't friends with Marco... Or at least Facebook didn't reflect that real-world fact that we are friends. Naturally I clicked "Add to Friends"... And one of those fancy Facebook DHTML overlays came up and animated a very curious message:

You have exceeded the limit for adding friends!

You are temporarily blocked from adding friends. Block times vary depending on the feature and scale of abuse. Blocks cannot be lifted.

Misuse of Facebook's features may result in your account being disabled.

If you have questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here.

Click here to go home.

Huh? You can't put a limit on friendship! Damn you Facebook! First it threatens me. Then it tells me to go home. Nice touch. I'm taking my ball with me!

I clicked on the FAQ, and it says, "Facebook has determined that you are using a feature at a rate that is likely to be abusive." What? It was one person. One single click. So what are those limits? Well, to that, the FAQ says, "Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that we enforce." Hmm... If you had good abuse prevention, you would be able to disclose it, right? "But then people could get around it!" you might say. Well, not if it's good! Come on Facebook, get to work! I'm not abusing anything.

Sorry Marco, we'll have to wait for Facebook to trust me again before the world knows we're friends.