Whitelist doesn't work

Hi,

i activated the whitelist on my server so only my friends can join it and as i tried it i didn't set anyone on the list but i can still join the server. I tried to add me to the list and then remove myself again but i still can join the server no matter if anyone is added to the list or not. I restarted the server several times but nothing has changed.

Can anyone tell me what i'm doing wrong?

Vanilla, 1.16.3, not cracked.

Thank you, i tried it by deleting me as an operator and it works fine. Now i get the error thats saying i'm not whitelisted. Thanks for the help.