The “People You May Know” section on Facebook can be both obvious and bizarre. You may have come across people you’re friends with in real life as well as brief acquaintances. While, sometimes, Facebook suggests people you’ve never seen before in your life. This can make you wonder how Facebook suggests friends.
If you think Facebook leaves this up to destiny, you’re wrong. It has an unmatched algorithm that works with all the information you provide it with. This algorithm feeds upon several data like mutual friends and imported contacts. It then determines who your next friends on Facebook are going to be.
Within this article, we will be addressing most of the details on how Facebook suggests friends and how it doesn’t.
How Does Facebook Suggest Friends?
To know the details on how Facebook suggests friends, here are the answers to your most sought-after questions.
Facebook uses mutual friends as a basis for suggesting friends. If you share mutual friends with another person on Facebook, you will show up in their People You May Know. And, they will appear on yours.
This happens because Facebook’s algorithm deduces that you might know each other as you two have similar friends.
Imported Contact List
Facebook can tap into your imported contact list to come up with friend suggestions. The phone numbers and email addresses in your contacts enable Facebook to recommend people for you to add.
If you wish, you have the authority to change this feature. Or, turn it back on, in case you find this useful for networking.
User’s Calls and Text Data
As per the claims of Facebook, they have access to your calls and text data. Before you go into panic mode, you should understand that Facebook does not store the content of your calls and text messages. What it does collect are the calls and text history.
If you’re concerned about this information being sold to any third party, Facebook denies doing anything along these lines. So, your secrets are safe and Facebook will take them to the grave.
But, if you’re suspicious, you may choose to not give away this data by stopping the contacts from uploading.
Profile information is another data Facebook uses to line up a new list of users in your “People You May Know” section. This data includes your bio, education, work, current city, likes, interests, etc.
