Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

http://fusion.net/story/319108/facebook-phone-location-friend-suggestions/

by braythwayt • 10 years ago

92 59 10 years ago

"Location information by itself doesn’t indicate that two people might be friends" - interesting, and guessing it was IP based so they might put more weight behind it, but I keep getting this for an ex-housemate. Nothing else in common, no common friends, just the fact we were both regularly in the same place/same network.

xuhu• 10 years ago

The man from the article attended a common event with the other man who appeared on his friends suggestion list. Maybe facebook has a rule that if the event is small, the attendees can be assumed to have met IRL.

akerro• 10 years ago

What if I moved out from a neighbourhood because I had enemies there, we didn't like each other? Now I'm coming back to my parents house and facebook reminds me about them and them about me?

m0v_eax3• 10 years ago

If you have actual enemies, it might make sense to block them on things like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..

gmarx2• 10 years ago

Do you have enemies? Does a typical person have enemies?

zaccus• 10 years ago

It's not unheard of to have people in your extended network who you would rather not have alerted to your whereabouts. Examples: abusive ex, clingy co-worker, mother in law, etc. "Enemy" is a rather melodramatic term but you get the idea.

guard-of-terra• 10 years ago

Just yesterday somebody warned that Facebook does location-based friends suggestion (was suggested to friend a taxi driver) and promptly accused to be tin foil hatter.

That's just how it goes every time.

ourmandave• 10 years ago

How awkward would it be when the FBI agents parked in the van outside your house keep popping up on your suggested friends list?

gmarx2• 10 years ago

Genius. Let's write that screenplay!

creshal• 10 years ago

Facebook uses location to suggest new friends–which could be a privacy disaster

No, the privacy disaster happened when Facebook was allowed to collect all that data in the first place.

ulli• 10 years ago

Goddamned Facebook!! Creating environments filled with unintended consequences everyday of the week.

There are so many untrained, misguided, semi-literate people in the world, who just get thrown into these environments totally unprepared. It literally sickens me.

Sorry I woke up today morning to read this - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/salem/21-yr-old-woma...

Parents get blamed. Police get blamed. Govts get blamed. Blame goes around. People get defensive rather than constructive. What a mess! Seriously how the fuck is anyone supposed to be prepared technically and socially to deal with this stuff?

jasonkostempski• 10 years ago

That's a shitty story, but blaming Facebook for it seems a bit of a stretch. By that logic, photo editing software is responsible; computers; electricity, etc. A horrible society is definitley responsible for that one.

tdkl• 10 years ago

Yes, horrible society that overvalues a social networking site in every aspect in our lives.

netman21• 10 years ago

Linkedin does this too. It suggested that I connect with an academic copy editor. My only other connection? We sat next to each other at a co-working space. Of course Linkedin was not using geo-location. They must have noticed that we were both on the same network.

Jdam• 10 years ago

agree, LinkedIn suggestions are really, really good/creepy, way more than Facebook, at least for me.

0xmohit3• 10 years ago

Unsubscribe from LinkedIn
Delete email account
Sell house, live in woods
Find bottle in river
Has note inside
It's from LinkedIn

Source: https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617

cylinder2• 10 years ago

I can't think of a single reason to use LinkedIn's native app.

fps• 10 years ago

linkedin's IP based tracking includes their website, and doesn't require you to share your location through the browser. They've been doing that for years. If you share a network gateway with someone, LinkedIn will suggest that person as a contact.

HBreakhh• 10 years ago

I don't expect anything to Facebook when it comes to privacy.

gcb0• 10 years ago

just because you shrug it off, doesn't mean they are above the law.

braythwayt2• 10 years ago

Well, there are several levels of non-privacy to expect:

  - Facebook collects data about me
  - Facebook shares my data with big corporations who want to sell me stuff
  - Facebook shares my data with my friends
  - Facebook shares my data with people who aren't my friends

For many people, this is a surprising escalation of their expectations. For some, it is outright dangerous.

m0v_eax3• 10 years ago

Because people expect services as robust and useful as Facebook to be free? Based on how much time people spend using their service, the user's data is hardly a large price to pay. Have certain types of things you like, profession, education, gender, demographic and expect your profile able to be targeted (anonymously) with advertising. Share something public (including anything above), expect any corporation to be able to see or mine it.

smokeyj• 10 years ago

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks

dredmorbius• 10 years ago

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/

alistairSH3• 10 years ago

I don't understand why people use the Facebook native app at all. Their mobile website works quite well and should avoid many of the issues with the app (location sharing, battery drain, etc).

drcross• 10 years ago

Facebook recently disabled their messenger platform on the website, when you click the messages tab it brings you directly to the app store to install their app. This means you have to use the App to message people. The app requires such egregious permissions that I absolutely refuse to install it. It's a shame because it worked perfectly in the past.

wslh• 10 years ago

And also Messenger doesn't have end to end encryption, so every message remains in Facebook.

alistairSH3• 10 years ago

They must be A/B testing; I can still access messages on the mobile site (Safari on iPhone 5s).

And, given privacy issues and anecdotal reports of battery drain, I'll just forgo messages on that platform if they make the mobile site change permanent.

germanier• 10 years ago

You could use messenger.com with a desktop user-agent. That site works fine on a phone screen.

soylentcola• 10 years ago

I agree with your assessment of Messages and I also don't have either the FB or Messages mobile app installed.

That said, messages are still working for me in Metal (third party FB app) and in my mobile browser. Even if/when they stop working that way, I figure I'll be able to tick the "desktop mode" box in my mobile browser to set the user agent and get it that way. Barring that I can just check those handful of messages I get via my desktop computer.

I guess I just don't depend on FB messaging for anything important so it's less an issue for me. If someone wants to reach me, they can call or text and Hangouts works fine across mobile and desktop on Android, iOS, Windows, OSX, Linux, etc. for group messaging.

jmspring• 10 years ago

I've been able to use https://mbasic.facebook.com from an Android device for messaging. Not ideal, but better than installing one of their apps.

lucideer2• 10 years ago

When exactly did the function disappear for you? I'm still using the website messenger with no issues, but I wonder are my days numbered.

They've also recently added WebNotifications support to the website messenger functionality which leverages the phone notifications as an app would.

gcr• 10 years ago

What about on iOS with fine-grained permissions? Messenger works just fine for me. I've revoked everything except background updates to get notifications.

When will these fine-grained permissions come to Android?

anexprogrammer2• 10 years ago

It still works, you just have to fight it steering you to the app store every step of the way.

I had to borrow someone's phone 2 days ago to send a quick FB message and it took about 10x longer than it should due to it trying to hide the native interface "it's going away soon, install messenger".

ProAm• 10 years ago

It can't be too long until we can run VM's on our phones and isolate all our apps from the main phone OS? This seems like a great need to be filled.

Kluny• 10 years ago

You can still use the website for messaging if you use Firefox as your browser (android only).

nthj• 10 years ago

Paper on iOS includes Messenger functionality in the same app (I'm not a fan of the constant app switching) and seems to avoid the power drain of the regular app.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-stories-from-facebook/...

drcongo• 10 years ago

I don't understand why people use Facebook at all.

lucideer2• 10 years ago

In case you're not being facetious, adoption begets adoption.

People use it because some people they like to follow aren't on Twitter

People use it to communicate with people who aren't on [insert competing messaging platform] because it's easier than convincing every friend to move to your preferred one.

People use it to track events because it has wider adoption than Eventbrite/etc. (and that platform choice lies largely with the organiser rather than attendees)

etc.

psychometry• 10 years ago

Because we have social lives? It's where events are organized, photos are posted, current issues discussed, and friends stay in touch. It's really not that hard to understand.

danso• 10 years ago

Because it offers a far superior user experience...for the times I find myself in self-loathing after checking Facebook for the nth time, at least I want to not be struggling with the interface.

The thing with Facebook is that I use it when I know I want to give away information. For example, when I'm at an airport about to takeoff to an unfamiliar city but I'm not sure which of my casual friends (too casual to send out an email blast) are at the destination, I appreciate the location-based feature of Facebook that detects that you're at an airport and makes it easy to autofill origin and destination. I want my location to be known and so, I might as well use the native app.

thirdsun• 10 years ago

I really thought this was already a well-established and known fact. I saw friend suggestions quite often after attending events where I ran into very loose acquaintances I never spoke to but share a few friends with. That by itself isn't too surprising, but the fact that this happens after we were geographically close led me to believe that this is common knowledge.

m0v_eax3• 10 years ago

I love it. I've wished this feature implemented for quite some time.

skynetv2• 10 years ago

i never use facebook on mobile devices, i have a different "supervised" profile on Chrome for facebook use and nothing else.

i use it because of how many people are on there, but i wont let them snoop on me

0xmohit3• 10 years ago

Do you need anybody else to snoop upon you if you're using Chrome?

Has Google stopped identifying a given Chrome installation using unique IDs?

0xmohit3• 10 years ago

I'm not sure if it is either new or surprising.

I did an experiment some 3 years back from within a corporate network -- the difference being that it was done on a desktop, not mobile. The sequence of events was roughly:

- Spin off a new VM

- Create a brand new email address with fictitious identity

- Sign up to Facebook using the newly created fictitious identity

Result: The suggested "friends" were folks in that building (who were on the same network).

(The experiment was performed to demo how creepy such networks are.)

brett40324• 10 years ago

Nice:)

pmlnr• 10 years ago

Or it may result in real-world friendships.

Too bad I don't have the Facebook app installed any more.

zeeshanm• 10 years ago

They also suggest friends based on who has viewed your profile.

jedberg• 10 years ago

They probably aren't using location but IP block. In fact, I'm almost certain your IP block is used for both suggested friends and your Newsfeed.

I used to see my coworkers all the time in my Newsfeed, but now that I don't work there (and therefore we don't share an IP anymore) I suddenly started seeing them a lot less.

I go to their page and see they are posting, and after interacting with a few posts they started showing up again, but I have to go to their page and interact every few weeks to get them to keep showing up.

Also, whenever I go and visit the old office, if I use Facebook there, all of a sudden I get them all showing up in my Newsfeed again.

Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

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