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I'm pretty sure Facebook does this too. I moved cities and got a new job without using my network of friends to get it and I don't keep any [accurate] personal
by evilduck 12y ago
I'm pretty sure Facebook does this too. I moved cities and got a new job without using my network of friends to get it and I don't keep any [accurate] personal contact data on Facebook. Suddenly my boss and coworkers are suggested people I may know despite the only thing we shared in common w.r.t. Facebook is a set of IP addresses.
- discardorama 12y agoI have multiple Facebook accounts (I created them for testing a long time ago). I use only 1 of them. But it's funny to see Facebook claiming that Account #2 sent a "friend request" to Account #3. And offering up the other accounts as "people you may know". The only commonality is the IP.
- boomzilla 12y agoWhat do you think all the "data scientists" hired by these companies do? IP addresses (or IPGeo) is one strong signal that goes into the "people who you might know" model. One can argue how effective these models are, but it's quite likely that they are found to be useful, for some metrics that the companies care about, like user growth, revenue or whatever. It's also likely that negative sentiment on a forum like HN is not part of the metrics these models are optimized for.
- discardorama 12y agoAs a data scientist, I have always debated the efficacy of the IP address as an identifier. It could be useful, but used as-is, I think it is not that great a signal. Just because a signal gets you some positive results, does not make it useful. You have to also look at the second-order effects. Does it creep out people? Does it make people less likely to use your service, thereby negating the positive effect of added connections?