Instead, we use a variety of public signals, like whether they've recently liked or commented on one of your posts, to choose which friends to show you there," a spokesperson told me. "Friends that show up in the Friends unit on profiles are not populated using any private information, like whether they've viewed your profile. I sheepishly discovered that I had more of a data connection than I realized with a couple folks who I'd thought were maybe cruising my page-a passing comment here or there or membership in some of the same groups could boost their ranking.įacebook has always claimed that its friend ranking algorithms take into account public interactions only, so no private chats or profile views. I use Facebook pretty sparingly, so something as simple as a single comment or tag in the last year or even an accepted friend request was enough to push someone into the top 10 or 20. Those "random" folks showing up on your profile page or chat list may make a bit more sense. Facebook tracks and records everything you do on the site, and if you browse through you can see all those little interactions you maybe forgot about, and draw a line between those and how the algorithm's ranking your friends. You can find some insight into the algorithm by scrolling through your activity log. But assuming the basic tenets are the same, the equation likely weighs various types of interactions differently: Being tagged with someone in a photo or attending the same event is a better indicator that you're tight with them than liking a news story they shared or commenting on a wall post. It uses machine learning and takes thousands of data points into account to determine people's social proximity. The formula also gives extra weight to people who recently posted stories or photos, the company says. On the flip side, it may show you people you recently friended to jumpstart the connection, even if you haven't interacted yet. So the random high school acquaintance that's been popping up in your highlighted friends could be the algorithm gently nudging you to keep in touch with someone you've been friends with a long time. (With 1.5 billion users, clearly the approach is working.)įriend ordering algorithms take into account how much you "interact" with certain people as well as how often and how recently. This makes sense: It's in the best interest of Facebook's ad-driven business model for us to connect and engage with as many people as possible. Or if someone else is visiting your Facebook page, it's a sampling of people that person might want to connect with based on your mutual friends or interests. In other words, these are the people the algorithm is subtly encouraging you to interact with. They never interact publicly, but she used to have a thing for him, so I'm scared."įacebook told me this is a group of relevant friends intended to be a useful prompt for the user. "Is the way that I see my friends' 9-boxes the same way they view it? And are the people I see in their 9-boxes the people they interact with privately/publicly? During the past few weeks I've been seeing that girl persistently on my boyfriend's 9-box. "Guys please help me here," posted one forum user. "This girl i'm talking to keeps asking me about a few girls on my top 9 and I tell her I rarely talk to them and I have no clue as to why they pop up," asked one nervous redditor. What's more, there's a sort of hunch proliferating through the social media collective consciousness that if someone you've barely interacted with is featured high up on your list of friends, you can deduce that that's your stalker, which would in turn mean the subject of your stalking could see you scoring prime real estate on his or her profile.Ī cursory Google search turns up years' worth of anxious questions posted to forums like Quora and Reddit asking how Facebook orders our friend list, by folks worried the ranking can signal a one-sided relationship, frustrated that someone they dislike is persistently showing up on their page, panicking that their crush is going to figure out they've been stalking, or suspicious that their significant other is cheating because the some cutie is featured as a top friend. Who is "stalking" whom is one of the most private and sensitive pieces of information Facebook has Most of us aren't in the habit of quantifying and organizing the people in our lives, and yet here a mysterious algorithm is doing it for us, beyond our control. Is it though? How Facebook ranks and orders our friends is an unsettling mystery. His response? "It's because you're creeping on me, stop creeping on me!"
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