Suggested mistakes and great shoes…
How Facebook’s AI has put my most recent heartbreak and cute pairs of shoes, right smack dab in my face.
Suggested friends on Facebook is nothing new. It’s a feature that’s been there practically since the beginning of social media. Add your university, possibly find a new classmate. Sync your Gmail and find a few more friends. Join a group and find a whole bunch of weirdos on the internet that loves the same bizarro crap you do.
Argenta Hall Fall 2012 a ‘friend’ of mine on Facebook became the who’s who of what events were going on my freshman year. Who was headed down to the Wolf Den, the place of many underage shenanigans, who was going to the game and when they were leaving at what time with whom. This digital social network became a very real outlet to my real-life social network.

The suggested friend feature became quite handy in this situation — allowing me to connect with whats-his-face that I met at the game or to see what exactly was going on this coming weekend.
Fast forward nearly 7 years from these dorm days — I no longer use Facebook in the same ways. Now, if I want to know what’s going on, I text a friend or hear it from word of mouth first. facebook ‘events’ are primarily to ogle what’s going on in the Bay area and what’s worth taking a weekend trip down for.
But now, 1573 ‘friends’ later, what purpose does the suggested friend feature hold? Especially in a time when my millennial peers are flocking away from the site more than ever. Two of my closest friends don’t even have accounts citing ‘pettiness’ and ‘I have no need to feel like I’m in high school again’ as reasons behind the reasons that they left the platform.
And they may not be far from wrong — three months out of a breakup of a long-term relationship, my number one suggested ‘friend’ to every event, the first one to pop up in my messenger, and the first one at the top of my ‘friends’ list is my ex. As if I needed another reminder of the heartbreak I was intermittently experiencing.
But it’s not just ex-boyfriends who appear in my suggested friends feed, men I’ve gone on single dates with and had it fizzle out for one reason or another haunt my feeds as well. Hell, Facebook has known my ex-boyfriend longer than I have.
I know the logic, heck as a digital strategist with a strong history in strategic communications — I’ve leveraged it for ad campaigns, and to research audiences. I’ve used it to figure out interests and cyberstalk someone before a first date. But I can’t but help be extremely frustrated at that logic for throwing painful memories right in my face.
The ‘People You May Know’ feature has existed since 2008, in millennial terms — it’s likely to be your entire Facebook history. And since then, it’s been haunting men and women alike with ex-lovers, ex-lovers’ new-lovers, landlords, and, even the deceased.
But the problem doesn’t just exist with ex-partners, people that you may have tagged in a thousand photos messaged, had their phone number or email or shared a geographical space with.
It also exists to remind you about that guy you went on one date with that you thought was totally great and things were moving forward, and then completely ghosted you like the immature human he is. Or the other you gave your number to at a bar right before he made a very dumb comment and you’re glad he never texted you, and low-key wish for all of his sports teams to lose. These are the creepier ones.
We have some understanding of the logic that gave us those ‘friends’ freshman year of college, and the reminder of that terrible date, but the logic isn’t an exact science.
We know when it pulls from contacts, or emails but Tinder matches? How is Facebook gathering this data on us, and just how can I get it to stop recommending I invite my ex to that event nearby me?
According to Facebook’s help center, the ‘People You May Know’ pulls this data from the following:
- Having friends in common, or mutual friends. This is the most common reason for suggestions
- Being in the same Facebook group or being tagged in the same photo
- Your networks (example: your school, university or work)
- Contacts you’ve uploaded
So if at one point in time, you had someone’s phone number in your phone (like your ex), they’ll be in those Facebook suggestions for some time to come.
The platform even has been debated to use location data to put suggested friends in front of your face. Tech reporter, and privacy researcher Kashmir Hill first noticed this and reported it on Splinter News in 2016. This location data, which supposedly isn’t used to suggest ‘friends’ anymore, is still used to send targeted ads and suggest locations for you to visit, still part of much of the data that’s gathered by Facebook every time you use it.
If there’s anything we’ve learned from the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal from earlier this year, it’s that our social profiles know far more about us than we ever honestly and openly give them, and that includes the people we interact with. Based upon a ‘Friend Graph’ Facebook used as part of a promotion for it’s ‘Friends Day’ in 2016 — members of the site in the US are merely 3.46 degrees of separation apart.
Despite this very creepy, and slightly unnerving information. It’s just a computer. Yeah, it knows our birthdays, whether we are more likely to be democratic or republican, people who may be close in our lives (like those ex-lovers they keep suggesting me to take to events), and so much more — but at the end of the day there’s no actual physical human peering in on us.
And that’s why this is so unnerving. Your friend wouldn’t ask if you were bringing your ex to the concert, but dammit, Facebook would. ‘On this Day’ does a great job of reminding me of my grandfather’s funeral every year, and that terrible date I went on last week. It would even keep up-to-date on men who ghosted you better than you can.
In all reality, is this the worst thing that this data has on you? A couple of bad dates and ill-fated memories? Why don’t we all delete the platform and then live under a rock?
As a media professional, an educator, and as an individual just genuinely interested in staying connected with loved ones, I still use the platform several times a day. Simply having my data isn’t going to keep me away from this site I’ve been on for literally a decade.
It’s not an addiction, or a self-obsessed reason, the platform is a tool — and so is this data. It spares me from seeing Fox News on the daily, a few people from high school I have no interest in seeing on my timeline, and makes it easier to find and stay connected to friends and loved ones in other cities.
That algorithm shoots you a discount code for those shoes you’ve been eyeing (Lotta from Stockholm, I’ve been eyeing a pair of your clogs for some time now, *wink wink*), reminds you of a book to preorder, or tells you about concerts coming up near you.
We can have such a love-hate relationship with this information. On one hand, it allows us to have just the content that we want to have, perfectly tailored to us. In my case, I’m fortunate enough to see Broadly’s content, feminist articles, and think pieces published by close friends. Unfortunately, the platform takes about as long as us to get over our ex-lovers, keeping them right in the forefront of the experience for a while.
As much as we want to hate these algorithms at times, its merely a bunch of numbers in some sort data storage somewhere. It’s not a personal attack reminding you of the guy you need to be getting over, or that immature asshole who flaked. But rather, just a bunch of numbers. Data in a spreadsheet.
And in a weird way, knowing that every time I see an old flame’s face pop up as someone I should reach out to on the social network, that it’s not some super geek bored with his life taunting me with heartbreak, but rather a giant mathematical formula, makes it a little bit easier.
Even more so knowing that those same bunch of numbers provide me with discount codes for really cute shoes that I can get back on my feet with. 👠

