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> “Without additional information from the people involved, we’re not able to explain why one person was recommended as a friend to another.” Such a terrible e

> “Without additional information from the people involved, we’re not able to explain why one person was recommended as a friend to another.” Such a terrible excuse. FB you only have one job! Fail.

mrweasel 10y ago
Facebook must understand how weird that sounds. How can they not know why people are recommended to each other? They really do need to dig into the issue, if in fact they don't know. Because something seriously need to be excluded from their recommendation algorithm if the article is true.
- vidarh 10y ago
  In fact, they can expect very serious investigations throughout Europe if someone complains about it to their local information commissioners or equivalent here. If they are in fact sucking in contact details from users phones and using them for matching and recommendations, that would seem to be something that would be serious enough to likely require express consent (in other words: users taking an explicit action, rather than being "opted in" implicitly by agreeing to a TOS or similar) under EU data protection regulations. Not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if there isn't one or more data protection violations lurking in there somewhere.
- brianfitz 10y ago
  She can't reveal the patients to them, so Facebook wouldn't be in a position to give a specific reason -- only generically how the algorithm is calculated.
- tudorw 10y ago
  not surprising really, I have often written software, returned a decade later and had to unravel why it does what it does, even though I am one person and it's just a few thousand lines of code, I can well imagine the FB system is too complex for any individual to inspect, and if the record keeping and documentation on the whys as well as the hows is incomplete then we are we are...
- ethanbond 10y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't know. They also don't know how timelines are generated. Strange place.
dunkelheit 10y ago
Actually it is the most reasonable thing for them to say. Anything more specific would be a privacy violation in itself.
ehudla 10y ago
Technical question: does anyone know if FB can easily answer why X was recommended to Y? That is, do they have to manually check or can they query this easily and get the precise answer why a recommendation was presented(for example: the reason why X was recommended to Y on date d, cannot be that X is connected to Z and and Z to Y, if X connect to Z on d+1; I assume bad inferences like this will probably happen often if such questions are answered manually).

mrweasel 10y ago

Facebook must understand how weird that sounds. How can they not know why people are recommended to each other? They really do need to dig into the issue, if in fact they don't know. Because something seriously need to be excluded from their recommendation algorithm if the article is true.

vidarh 10y ago
In fact, they can expect very serious investigations throughout Europe if someone complains about it to their local information commissioners or equivalent here. If they are in fact sucking in contact details from users phones and using them for matching and recommendations, that would seem to be something that would be serious enough to likely require express consent (in other words: users taking an explicit action, rather than being "opted in" implicitly by agreeing to a TOS or similar) under EU data protection regulations. Not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if there isn't one or more data protection violations lurking in there somewhere.
brianfitz 10y ago
She can't reveal the patients to them, so Facebook wouldn't be in a position to give a specific reason -- only generically how the algorithm is calculated.
tudorw 10y ago
not surprising really, I have often written software, returned a decade later and had to unravel why it does what it does, even though I am one person and it's just a few thousand lines of code, I can well imagine the FB system is too complex for any individual to inspect, and if the record keeping and documentation on the whys as well as the hows is incomplete then we are we are...
ethanbond 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't know. They also don't know how timelines are generated. Strange place.

dunkelheit 10y ago

Actually it is the most reasonable thing for them to say. Anything more specific would be a privacy violation in itself.

ehudla 10y ago

Technical question: does anyone know if FB can easily answer why X was recommended to Y? That is, do they have to manually check or can they query this easily and get the precise answer why a recommendation was presented(for example: the reason why X was recommended to Y on date d, cannot be that X is connected to Z and and Z to Y, if X connect to Z on d+1; I assume bad inferences like this will probably happen often if such questions are answered manually).