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Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

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Re: Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

#11

Post by jasonkostempski »

ulli wrote: post #8

Goddamned Facebook!! Creating environments filled with unintended consequences everyday of the week. There are so many untrained, misguided, semi-literate people in the world, who just get thrown into these environments totally unprepared. It literally sickens me. Sorry I woke up today morning to read this - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/salem/21-yr-old-woma... Parents get blamed. Police get blamed. Govts g…

That's a shitty story, but blaming Facebook for it seems a bit of a stretch. By that logic, photo editing software is responsible; computers; electricity, etc. A horrible society is definitley responsible for that one.

Re: Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

#13

Post by braythwayt »

HBreakhh wrote: post #10

I don't expect anything to Facebook when it comes to privacy.

Well, there are several levels of non-privacy to expect:

  - Facebook collects data about me
  - Facebook shares my data with big corporations who want to sell me stuff
  - Facebook shares my data with my friends
  - Facebook shares my data with people who aren't my friends
For many people, this is a surprising escalation of their expectations. For some, it is outright dangerous.

Re: Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

#15

Post by Jdam »

netman21 wrote: post #9

Linkedin does this too. It suggested that I connect with an academic copy editor. My only other connection? We sat next to each other at a co-working space. Of course Linkedin was not using geo-location. They must have noticed that we were both on the same network.

agree, LinkedIn suggestions are really, really good/creepy, way more than Facebook, at least for me.

Re: Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

#17

Post by drcross »

alistairSH wrote: post #16

I don't understand why people use the Facebook native app at all. Their mobile website works quite well and should avoid many of the issues with the app (location sharing, battery drain, etc).

Facebook recently disabled their messenger platform on the website, when you click the messages tab it brings you directly to the app store to install their app. This means you have to use the App to message people. The app requires such egregious permissions that I absolutely refuse to install it. It's a shame because it worked perfectly in the past.

Re: Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

#18

Post by thirdsun »

I really thought this was already a well-established and known fact. I saw friend suggestions quite often after attending events where I ran into very loose acquaintances I never spoke to but share a few friends with. That by itself isn't too surprising, but the fact that this happens after we were geographically close led me to believe that this is common knowledge.

Re: Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

#19

Post by wslh »

drcross wrote: post #17
alistairSH wrote: post #16

I don't understand why people use the Facebook native app at all. Their mobile website works quite well and should avoid many of the issues with the app (location sharing, battery drain, etc).

Facebook recently disabled their messenger platform on the website, when you click the messages tab it brings you directly to the app store to install their app. This means you have to use the App to message people. The app requires such egregious permissions that I absolutely refuse to install it. It's a shame because it worked perfectly in the past.

And also Messenger doesn't have end to end encryption, so every message remains in Facebook.

Re: Facebook uses location to suggest new friends

#20

Post by alistairSH »

drcross wrote: post #17
alistairSH wrote: post #16

I don't understand why people use the Facebook native app at all. Their mobile website works quite well and should avoid many of the issues with the app (location sharing, battery drain, etc).

Facebook recently disabled their messenger platform on the website, when you click the messages tab it brings you directly to the app store to install their app. This means you have to use the App to message people. The app requires such egregious permissions that I absolutely refuse to install it. It's a shame because it worked perfectly in the past.

They must be A/B testing; I can still access messages on the mobile site (Safari on iPhone 5s).

And, given privacy issues and anecdotal reports of battery drain, I'll just forgo messages on that platform if they make the mobile site change permanent.

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