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Of course the recommendations are made from the friend he just made! It's just traversing the public, non-privacy-violating graph of mutual friends, and suggest

Of course the recommendations are made from the friend he just made! It's just traversing the public, non-privacy-violating graph of mutual friends, and suggesting a small (and possibly random) subset of nodes near to him. There's no conspiracy. He just doesn't understand how much information is encoded by that first friend he made. On a different note, as I've put in other comments, Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations. In other words, it won't use private information other people have generated, like what profiles they visit or what messages they send or what contacts they have, to create recommendations for a person who can't access that information.

thefreeman 14y ago
You've been posting this stuff all over the thread. How about a link to the source of "Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations". I'd also like to see them define it the way you have, because as written that is pretty vague.
- doctorpangloss 14y ago
  Yes, I did ask an employee of Facebook directly. It's hard for them to communicate about in the same way that Google doesn't talk about how it ranks pages. It's not a trade secrets issue—it's an issue of spam, and I respect their interest in preventing people from exploiting the friend recommendation system.
codeka 14y ago
> Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations How do you know this? Do you work for Facebook, or are you just guessing? It seems to me it could be a combination between chaz's explanation and yours. If the friend he added is also friends with the OP's grandmother, cousins and other friends then it seems OK that Facebook would "recommend" those people to the OP. But then, why those people and not all of his other friend's friends? Could it be using the contact list of the recommended friend's to prioritize those recommendations over all others?
objclxt 14y ago
I think one of the problems is whilst Facebook doesn't use 'private information other people have generated' it does leverage information your friends have shared in non-obvious ways to a layperson. If it's unclear or people don't understand how Facebook is making its recommendations and as a result become creeped out then that's a problem - whether or not those recommendations were created according to the privacy policy.
- doctorpangloss 14y ago
  I think you have an insightful point here. For something like friend recommendations, it seems inherently privacy-violating. And it's a problem Facebook doesn't communicate clearly how the sausage is made. Like you, I don't believe that they need to be so afraid of the consequences—I don't think people will exploit friend recommendations knowing how recommendations are made.
lucb1e 14y ago
Actually, the friend is completely unrelated from my other friends and family. I met him through an online game and he's not even from the same country. I don't mean to make this a conspiracy theory, but I don't understand how Facebook can conjure up so much information to identify most of my relatives.
- doctorpangloss 14y ago
  Maybe unrelated, but the amazing thing of social graph theory is that they'll still be "closer" in distance. I think it's a problem that they don't explain this better. But I think they have a lot of complicated priorities.

thefreeman 14y ago

You've been posting this stuff all over the thread. How about a link to the source of "Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations". I'd also like to see them define it the way you have, because as written that is pretty vague.

doctorpangloss 14y ago
Yes, I did ask an employee of Facebook directly. It's hard for them to communicate about in the same way that Google doesn't talk about how it ranks pages. It's not a trade secrets issue—it's an issue of spam, and I respect their interest in preventing people from exploiting the friend recommendation system.

codeka 14y ago

> Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations How do you know this? Do you work for Facebook, or are you just guessing? It seems to me it could be a combination between chaz's explanation and yours. If the friend he added is also friends with the OP's grandmother, cousins and other friends then it seems OK that Facebook would "recommend" those people to the OP. But then, why those people and not all of his other friend's friends? Could it be using the contact list of the recommended friend's to prioritize those recommendations over all others?

objclxt 14y ago

I think one of the problems is whilst Facebook doesn't use 'private information other people have generated' it does leverage information your friends have shared in non-obvious ways to a layperson. If it's unclear or people don't understand how Facebook is making its recommendations and as a result become creeped out then that's a problem - whether or not those recommendations were created according to the privacy policy.

doctorpangloss 14y ago
I think you have an insightful point here. For something like friend recommendations, it seems inherently privacy-violating. And it's a problem Facebook doesn't communicate clearly how the sausage is made. Like you, I don't believe that they need to be so afraid of the consequences—I don't think people will exploit friend recommendations knowing how recommendations are made.

lucb1e 14y ago

Actually, the friend is completely unrelated from my other friends and family. I met him through an online game and he's not even from the same country. I don't mean to make this a conspiracy theory, but I don't understand how Facebook can conjure up so much information to identify most of my relatives.

doctorpangloss 14y ago
Maybe unrelated, but the amazing thing of social graph theory is that they'll still be "closer" in distance. I think it's a problem that they don't explain this better. But I think they have a lot of complicated priorities.