We all know that Facebook is always trying to find other ways to make money. Most of the time they do this by pretending it is a useful addition for you.
I left facebook years ago and the only reason I created a new account was for Steemit. I am still thankful for that ;-) I get a reminder every day that I have more friends then I think. So that woke me up and I start digging what they do more. Besides spamming me.
Facebook knows this because the know my contact list. This is just one of the things they do. The one that I really "like" is the suggestion based on location. It is one of there latest "tests" for a limited group.
The moment you are on location for a longer duration, you get an suggestion. We can all imagen that if you are on your job or class there is a big change you know the suggested person in real life. At least that is the idea of Facebook. And it does make some sense.
It is a little scary that you never may have called this person. Or that he or she even knows you telephone number. The fact that you are in the same room is enough. These are tactics secret services use to map potential threats. That is seriously scary.
Now think of an other situation. You are at a party and have a nice time. There is someone who does seems to like you, but you have no interest at all. It happens. But Facebook does not know this. So next morning you have a nice friend suggestion and even worse, this person also have a suggestion to add you.
There are many situation to think of that you on a location for a while, but you do not want that other people know who you are. In a hotel, pub, camping etc.
But how do they do it? I assumed in the article that it is location based. But Facebook is not clear about it. They changed their statements several times on this matter. And it was only a experiment they say. There we go again.
We all know about Facebook and there experiments. I remember the experiment about influencing. By influencing the posts ranking of our news feeds, they monitored how we responded to that.
I think books like the circle or 1984 are mild when it comes to the experiments of Facebook. And now they change the terms and conditions for using whatsapp. What more experiments will we have to endure?
Wile I was writing this article. I found a nice WTF list on forbes with 10 facebook experiments. The location experiment I started this post with is not on that list. So it seems to be a little older. But there are some interesting ones on it about how rumors spread etc.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/10/facebook-experiments-on-users/#641a18933695
Can you do anything about it? Well besides not using the products facebook and whatsapp? It is really difficult. There are some tools to block location data to applications. But besides that, No.