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> Friends you May Know is really cool! I've got over 9000 suggestions and not a single accurate one. Maybe they have the best technology and all the data out t

> Friends you May Know is really cool! I've got over 9000 suggestions and not a single accurate one. Maybe they have the best technology and all the data out there, but I'm skeptical they can really use all the data they supposedly have on me. Same goes for any targeted advertisement, not just Facebook. Some come close (based on simple topic preferences), but in all those years I've yet to see any large number of the actually useful ones. All those data mining and AI-driven targeting seem to utterly fail, suggesting me to buy a second TV after I've just already got a new one. Or subscribe to Grammarly (every second YouTube pre-roll, seriously?!), when I've already bought that.

smelendez 8y ago
Interesting! It works pretty well for me. At worst it's usually people I don't know but logically could: friends of friends, people who worked somewhere I worked before or after me, people who went to my high school I never really knew. Occasionally it's full of apparent shady accounts: usually fake looking accounts of attractive women I have no friends in common with, then they'll disappear. I'm guessing scammers upload fake contact lists of random phone numbers to get on people's suggestion lists
- drdaeman 8y ago
  It's almost always people I've never ever heard of for me. Just some random strangers that I don't see any connections with. Sometimes those are probably friends-of-some-"friends," but I haven't bothered to check every unknown name and face. I've recently moved to a different country, and now I get suggestions of some random people supposedly from here - even though I don't know anyone here yet. Well, except a few coworkers and a landlord, who - if they have Facebook accounts - aren't in the suggestions, even though Facebook knows where I live and work (I don't advertise it, but that's not private either). Paired with the fact that Facebook intentionally spams daily with "you have 20 new notifications", they just train me to filter and ignore their notifications. If someone's going to message me there, I won't see them until the routine monthly check.
JoeSmithson 8y ago
I take it a kind of weird 21st century compliment that my machine learnt ad suggestions are so poor. I think it indicates Google/Facebook don't have that much data for me. Sometimes it's fun game trying to work out how the algorithm possibly thought I would know people from other countries with no mutual friends. > subscribe to Grammarly Oh my god. I considered installing it just to stop the ads, but I see that doesn't help.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Oh my god. I considered installing it just to stop the ads, but I see that doesn't help. I have mixed feelings about Grammarly. It's a perfect example of a thing that should not be an on-line service, but a fully off-line product. In its current form, it's essentially a keylogger.
  - drdaeman 8y ago
    They don't integrate with my email clients anyway, and their browser extensions are overreaching. I just use its desktop (Electron) app and website. Copy the text I want to proofread there, edit it, then paste it back. Wish their browser extensions would have a non-invasive on-demand mode, where the user has to click the toolbar icon to initiate the verification explicitly.
- oAlbe 8y ago
  > I considered installing it just to stop the ads uBlock Origin works wonders in that sense.

smelendez 8y ago

Interesting! It works pretty well for me. At worst it's usually people I don't know but logically could: friends of friends, people who worked somewhere I worked before or after me, people who went to my high school I never really knew. Occasionally it's full of apparent shady accounts: usually fake looking accounts of attractive women I have no friends in common with, then they'll disappear. I'm guessing scammers upload fake contact lists of random phone numbers to get on people's suggestion lists

drdaeman 8y ago
It's almost always people I've never ever heard of for me. Just some random strangers that I don't see any connections with. Sometimes those are probably friends-of-some-"friends," but I haven't bothered to check every unknown name and face. I've recently moved to a different country, and now I get suggestions of some random people supposedly from here - even though I don't know anyone here yet. Well, except a few coworkers and a landlord, who - if they have Facebook accounts - aren't in the suggestions, even though Facebook knows where I live and work (I don't advertise it, but that's not private either). Paired with the fact that Facebook intentionally spams daily with "you have 20 new notifications", they just train me to filter and ignore their notifications. If someone's going to message me there, I won't see them until the routine monthly check.

JoeSmithson 8y ago

I take it a kind of weird 21st century compliment that my machine learnt ad suggestions are so poor. I think it indicates Google/Facebook don't have that much data for me. Sometimes it's fun game trying to work out how the algorithm possibly thought I would know people from other countries with no mutual friends. > subscribe to Grammarly Oh my god. I considered installing it just to stop the ads, but I see that doesn't help.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Oh my god. I considered installing it just to stop the ads, but I see that doesn't help. I have mixed feelings about Grammarly. It's a perfect example of a thing that should not be an on-line service, but a fully off-line product. In its current form, it's essentially a keylogger.
- drdaeman 8y ago
  They don't integrate with my email clients anyway, and their browser extensions are overreaching. I just use its desktop (Electron) app and website. Copy the text I want to proofread there, edit it, then paste it back. Wish their browser extensions would have a non-invasive on-demand mode, where the user has to click the toolbar icon to initiate the verification explicitly.
oAlbe 8y ago
> I considered installing it just to stop the ads uBlock Origin works wonders in that sense.