what does friends of friends mean on facebook

Facebook's 'People y'all may know' is a phrase that seems harmless, if a chip formal - 'Oh come up to this political party! There'll be loads of people you may know there!' - but in the last few years it's become synonymous with that creepily authentic Suggested Friends carousel featuring people who yes, you practice know but, my god, how does Facebook KNOW yous know them?! Is Mark Zuckerberg really a wizard? Or more than pertinently, what is the ground for Facebook suggested friends? Is it stalking? Is it based on contour views? What exactly does it mean?

Facebook's official line on this, on their assist page, explains that they make selections for your Suggested Friends based on 'mutual friends, piece of work and teaching information, networks you lot're part of, contacts you've imported and many other factors'. It's the 'other factors' that are the most interesting, because how goddamn vague they are - especially when a suggested friend crops upwards, and you have no mutual friends in common.

Who is in my Facebook suggested friends and why?

Only having a brief browse over my own current suggested friends, there are at to the lowest degree three people at that place that I haven't met, I've never worked with, we didn't go to the aforementioned schoolhouse, I have no mutual friends with and they're not in my contacts. I of them is someone I'thousand adequately sure, later on doing a quick search on other social media sites, is currently seeing my ex. So why is she beingness suggested?! Is this to do with the 'other factors' Facebook mentions? I don't know her! Were nosotros in one case in the same cafe? Has she, completely understandably, been stalking me? Take nosotros finally found the definitive answer to how you can tell when people accept looked at my contour?!

What is Facebook suggested friends algorithm - what is it based on?

So many questions, so many conspiracy theories. Thankfully, I've done the hysterical researching, then when that guy yous slept with who never whatsapped back and you lot can't end thinking about pops upwardly on your suggested friends, you don't have to.

Are your suggested friends based on your location?

In one of the best cases of 'ER, NO I DIDN'T MEAN THAT, Shut IT Downwardly' Facebook revealed in 2016 that location data was one of the factors in suggested potential friends, before days later retracting information technology and proverb they admittedly didn't. Cool.

There were a number of slightly worrying reports of how eerily accurate the supposed algorithm is; 'Seriously, I've had enough reporters enquire me, freaked out, why Facebook is recommending their protected sources' tweeted Violet Bluish, a reporter on cybercrime.

If truthful, it also ways that Facebook uses similar technology to the NSA.

During an investigation, Fusion found a load of anecdotal show pointing towards location services being used. Ane example was a man who had attended an anonymous gathering for suicidal teenagers, and had and then seen one of the teenagers he didn't have any contact with other than being in the same place, popped upward as a suggested friend. They approached Facebook who said: 'Location information past itself doesn't indicate that two people might be friends, that'south why location is but one of the factors we utilise to propose people you may know.'

When Fusion had published an commodity, understandably, explaining how this is a privacy mess - Facebook immediately retracted information technology. The argument was inverse to the fact that location services had been trialled a year earlier, simply weren't one of the very vague 'other factors' described on the help site.

The journalist in question described 'repertorial whiplash - I've never had a spokesperson confirm and and so retract a story so quickly.'

I mode to end any apps using your location is to modify the location settings on your phone, or get rid of the Facebook app and apply it on adept ole Safari. Other browsers are bachelor.

Are your suggested friends based on who has looked at your profile?

There is no difficult show that someone else's activeness affects your folio - and a Facebook employee was fairly articulate on their stance in a contempo Quora thread:

Thanks for your illuminating and rich response, Peter. But I find it difficult to believe that, when trying to create the perfect suggested friends listing, Zuckerberg wouldn't have wanted algorithm boot into gear when you lot search for someone, or if someone searches for you. Considering that's the purest way it can tell if you want to be friends, surely? Plus, there are just also many anecdotes to ignore.

'I recently viewed someone who I haven't been in touch with for many years and who I didn't want to be in touch with,' says 1 anonymous user on Quora. 'Two weeks afterward I had a friend request from that person. I have no mutual friends and this person is far removed in my network of friends. Unless this person suddenly remembered me after almost 20 years since I have contacted them, so I have no other explanation.'

In a recent Vice investigation into how this suggested friend list happens, David Liben-Nowell, a computer science professor at Carleton College who studies the construction and evolution of social networks said:

'My hunch is that [Facebook is] using names you've searched for or profiles you've viewed to suggest friends to yous. Information technology would almost exist silly for them not to: if yous've shown an interest in a person while using Facebook, then you lot've as practiced as told Facebook that you lot might want to have some kind of relationship with them.'

Agreed - it does make a whole lot of sense, if they're trying to make the friends they suggest as accurate equally possible. And there'south also some fairly compelling evidence pointing to the fact that the friend grid works off the ground of who is looking at your contour, so why non suggested friends? I mean, that makes fifty-fifty more sense, if you think nearly it.

Are your suggested friends based on your phone contacts?

This one is a definite yes. In one of the many app updates, yous will have inadvertently synced all your phone contacts to Messenger. And if y'all've allowed Facebook to sync your phone contacts, then it's going to suggest yous connect to them online. Information technology tin can be freaky, though, if yous don't realise you lot've put people in your contacts because y'all're drunk, so they go suggested back at y'all.

'Somehow my suggested friends list is always chicks I accept had i dark stands with,' says a Reddit user who says words like 'chicks'. 'Facebook somehow looks through my contacts on my phone and uses their telephone numbers to suggest it. It's kinda creepy when yous run across a girl who y'all met one time and didn't even know her last name, merely somehow they are suggested for you.'

An easy way of getting rid of this via the Facebook app on your phone - go to settings, and whorl down until y'all see 'Sync Contacts'. Striking 'remove Facebook'. Done. Removed.

And bank check out the box that comes up as you're about to remove the contacts:

'If you choose to remove your imported contacts, friend suggestions for you and your friends may become less relevant'. Yep MATE. THAT'S SORT OF WHAT I Want COS You'RE CREEPING ME THE F OUT.

Are Facebook friends suggestions based on other third party apps like Tinder?

The official line on this is no. In fact, it couldn't be any more a 'no' if they tried, as they state on site: 'We do not employ cookies from third-party sites to generate or rank People You May Know'. Well in that location you are then.

However, if you're getting a flake freaked out past the fact that Tinder matches/people you've Bumbled have all of a sudden started cropping up, and then you're not lone - it's been a bit of a recent thing. And if you don't take their number in your phone, then how the hell exercise they know this if they AREN'T getting it through Tinder?

Well, it's likely that your Tinder match will accept too tried to stalk you lot on Facebook, although call back Facebook claim they don't propose friends who search your proper noun.

But the other, less speculative, solution is that you have their number on your Whatsapp contacts. Because Whatsapp bought Facebook, so if y'all've been 'sapping, and yous haven't un-synced your Facebook contacts (equally above), and so do that immediately.

Exhausting, isn't information technology?

Can you plow off or remove Facebook suggested friends?

Yes - indirectly. If you block someone, and then they won't show upward on your suggested friends list. And then if you have any particularly triggering people from your past, then it might be worth taking a deep breath, having a dram of whisky (or, like, a drinking glass of juice) and doing the human activity.

Oh, and you know how y'all can specify people who you don't desire to come upwardly in that horrific On This Day feature? They won't come up in your suggested friends either - which might exist a proficient idea if you don't want to all-out block someone, you just don't want them popping up all the time.

Yous're welcome.

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what does friends of friends mean on facebook

Source: https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/real-life/facebook-suggested-friends-work/