How does Facebook know?
How does Facebook know?
Author
Discussion

wildcat45

Original Poster:

8,160 posts

220 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
There's a lot of hate here for Facebook.

I think it's only full of chavvy crap if you have those sorts of friends and associates.

That aside, today it's been chucking up the usual 'suggested friends' and three people cropped up.

Three people I know from the same course I am on.

Three people that have no mutual friendships with me.

Three people who have no mutual friends with each other.

Normally I can see how suggested friends works. Mutual contacts, friends of friends, people you may communicate with ion a group etc.

Being a computer, it must have made the suggestions based on some binary logic.

Anyone care to explain?

trumptriple

211 posts

162 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
They have searched for you?

D1bram

1,518 posts

202 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
Do you have their phone numbers? Or they yours?

Facebook has suggested people to me I've know through work in the past.

Only connection I can find is that I have their number in my work phone, which via an Apple account must be sharing the information with my personal phone and hence FB. All very clever, a bit too clever if you ask me!


Doofus

34,588 posts

204 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
It frightens me. A short while ago, Facebook suggested sombody I should know. My next door neighbour's teenage daughter! I don't think she's ever spoken to me; I don't have any of the family in my phonebook, facebook or little black book. Yes, I know her, but I had no idea how Facebook would know that.

But reading the above posts, is it probable that she looked me up?

Hereward

5,149 posts

261 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
Doofus said:
It frightens me. A short while ago, Facebook suggested sombody I should know. My next door neighbour's teenage daughter! I don't think she's ever spoken to me; I don't have any of the family in my phonebook, facebook or little black book. Yes, I know her, but I had no idea how Facebook would know that.

But reading the above posts, is it probable that she looked me up?
Oi Oi, fill yer boots lad. Give her a Poke.

marshalla

15,902 posts

232 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
Doofus said:
It frightens me. A short while ago, Facebook suggested sombody I should know. My next door neighbour's teenage daughter! I don't think she's ever spoken to me; I don't have any of the family in my phonebook, facebook or little black book. Yes, I know her, but I had no idea how Facebook would know that.

But reading the above posts, is it probable that she looked me up?
Geolocation. It knows that you spend a lot of time near her.

GroundEffect

13,864 posts

187 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
They use analytics and very sophisticated learning algorithms to work this out. Scarily accurate in some cases.




anonymous-user

85 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
Doofus said:
is it probable that she looked me up?
Is it just me, or are you hopeful this is true..........smile

BRISTOL86

1,097 posts

136 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
marshalla said:
Geolocation. It knows that you spend a lot of time near her.
As do the police hehe

5678

6,146 posts

258 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
I had the same thought recently.

Suggestions were for people I know through my current contract. No connection between us other than we sometimes work in the same building, we don't even work for the same organisation and my FB has no knowledge of who I am working for at the moment.

I was aware of the searching trigger for suggestions, but geo-location I did not know about. Do FB publish any articles about their logic?

BoRED S2upid

21,106 posts

271 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
Flip side to this is that it's also suggesting to all the other users (read teenagers) in your location that they may want to befriend the man over the road and they are thinking the exact same things as you. He must have searched for us...

And you still think it's ok to be on fb.

pc.iow

1,879 posts

234 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
Hereward said:
Doofus said:
It frightens me. A short while ago, Facebook suggested sombody I should know. My next door neighbour's teenage daughter! I don't think she's ever spoken to me; I don't have any of the family in my phonebook, facebook or little black book. Yes, I know her, but I had no idea how Facebook would know that.

But reading the above posts, is it probable that she looked me up?
Oi Oi, fill yer boots lad. Give her a Poke.

Doofus

34,588 posts

204 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
Yeah, that's not happening. You know how they say that girls grow up to look like their mums? Well that would be bad enough, but this particular girl has looked like her mum since she was two.


DanSaff

580 posts

197 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
The other month Facebook suggested somebody I knew through work pre internet!

I thought how the fk does it know!

Sheepshanks

41,293 posts

150 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
BoRED S2upid said:
And you still think it's ok to be on fb.
I use it, but not with my real name. It still offers accurate suggestions of people who might know me and I assumed it was mainly location based.


In a similar vein, LinkedIn, which I use a lot for work, often suggests people my wife knows, and once suggested the hospital consultant who she had an upcoming appointment with - but neither of us had searched for his name.

I wondered if his LinkedIn is picking names off his patient list - that's a bit scary.

Oi_Oi_Savaloy

2,315 posts

291 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
Hereward said:
Doofus said:
It frightens me. A short while ago, Facebook suggested sombody I should know. My next door neighbour's teenage daughter! I don't think she's ever spoken to me; I don't have any of the family in my phonebook, facebook or little black book. Yes, I know her, but I had no idea how Facebook would know that.

But reading the above posts, is it probable that she looked me up?
Oi Oi, fill yer boots lad. Give her a Poke.
You rang my lord?

bomma220

18,166 posts

156 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
DanSaff said:
The other month Facebook suggested somebody I knew through work pre internet!

I thought how the fk does it know!
Similar thing happened to me, strange thing is I don't even use Facebook. Very odd.

Krikkit

27,939 posts

212 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
bomma220 said:
DanSaff said:
The other month Facebook suggested somebody I knew through work pre internet!

I thought how the fk does it know!
Similar thing happened to me, strange thing is I don't even use Facebook. Very odd.
You'll share similar friends from the same time, they could even have searched/stalked you. Everything is logged.

Very often they'll build profiles for people who haven't even signed up yet, knowing that their "ghost" profile can be linked to all kinds of people.

Very clever algorithms built by clever people, harvesting a world of data.

wildcat45

Original Poster:

8,160 posts

220 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
So on the basis you spend some time in the same place with someone it suggests a connection?

I don't commute, but does it therefore suggest people you share a train platform with, or bus stop?




melhookv12

961 posts

205 months

Thursday 21st April 2016
quotequote all
I've had taxi drivers that have phoned me to pick me up suggested. Using phone numbers I suspect.