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Makes sense as FB hyper optimizes for engagement. That said I wonder how the data is structured in their DB, how messy it is, how complicated a post can I make

Makes sense as FB hyper optimizes for engagement. That said I wonder how the data is structured in their DB, how messy it is, how complicated a post can I make to foil their parsing. There was a rumor back in college when we cared about social clout that the handful of people you see on the Friends list on your profile are the people who most recently/frequently check your profile (i.e., viewing someone's profile is already an interaction metric for FB). This trained me to not visit other people's profiles. To this day (when that list is just "most recent friends added"), I visit profiles very rarely and only if there is really something I want to check. It's not so baseless either. Of course this might be some bias or another working but there was a time I fell behind certain commitments to a Dev Group I was helping organize and poof, the friends list on my profile started to show my co-organizers. Felt like they were checking on me, on why I'm behind my stuff, why I was taking time to echo replies. I was just busy; sorry it happens. :)

mcintyre1994 6y ago
When we used to use Facebook in high school there were tonnes of fake apps that I assume just existed to suck up data that would claim to be able to show you who viewed your profile the most too. There was something floating around that you were meant to be able to put in the DevTools console for the same thing - this was probably before they had the big warning there and presumably also sucked up data or worse.
cgriswald 6y ago
I'd seen it claimed repeatedly that when others view your profile it doesn't affect People You May Know. I don't believe the claims. Despite being in the same location three days a week for several weeks with my fellow classmates, it was only after I gave a presentation to the class and my (unusual, non-English, impossible to spell phonetically) last name appeared on screen that I started seeing my classmates in People You May Know. It was only female classmates and IIRC we didn't even have mutual friends. Like you, I've been selective about going to people's profiles since then.

mcintyre1994 6y ago

When we used to use Facebook in high school there were tonnes of fake apps that I assume just existed to suck up data that would claim to be able to show you who viewed your profile the most too. There was something floating around that you were meant to be able to put in the DevTools console for the same thing - this was probably before they had the big warning there and presumably also sucked up data or worse.

cgriswald 6y ago

I'd seen it claimed repeatedly that when others view your profile it doesn't affect People You May Know. I don't believe the claims. Despite being in the same location three days a week for several weeks with my fellow classmates, it was only after I gave a presentation to the class and my (unusual, non-English, impossible to spell phonetically) last name appeared on screen that I started seeing my classmates in People You May Know. It was only female classmates and IIRC we didn't even have mutual friends. Like you, I've been selective about going to people's profiles since then.