Facebook Graph Search can show you single women who live nearby and who like 50 Shades of Grey… and so much more.
Facebook Graph Search
Facebook Graph Search was just announced by the monster social network with claims that it will help you ‘Find people who share your interests’ in case you want to start a book club or find a gym buddy. Uhhhh huh. I was just having a conversation over on Google+ about how it creeped me out that the new Facebook Graph Search just used my personal information to show me how it works. In reality, it’s not that it showed me MY information that was so scary, it was the potential it had to invade privacy across the board. First things first, let’s not forget that the FTC came out against Facebook and said it had been unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law in regards to it’s users privacy. Facebook told its users they could keep the information they share private, and then repeatedly allowed it to be shared and made public. (http://goo.gl/WxYis) So I think it’s totally fair to be critical of how they operate. As recently as December 2012, despite having provided the option the ability to hide from Facebook search was removed… you didn’t have a choice.
Regarding Graph Search… the creepy part is that you can now search for ‘Friends who like hot dogs’ and it’ll comb all the associated data and bring back results. That in itself is actually really cool… what’s not cool is that they retroactively included all the stuff from your past. I’m quite sure that back in 2008-2009 when they rolled out Pages and everyone was liking Coca-cola or liking Boobs or liking whatever that the end user didn’t have the expectation that those “likes” would become accessible via a search bar. There are people who probably thought it was really cool that they could listen to something on Spotify and it would show up in the sidebar ticker… but they weren’t aware that the information would live on beyond what they were doing right then. You’ll soon be able to query anything they’ve listened to in the past.
It’s not that Graph Search itself is bad; it’s that you had no option of leaving your past in the past. All your old checkins, likes, tagged photos, etc will now be part of graph search… despite the fact it being used for graph search wasn’t something you agreed to when you initially shared it.
Hilarious/creepy Facebook Graph Search
Let’s take Facebook Graph Search for a spin and see what we can find… how about… Married People Who Like Prostitutes?
Or maybe Jewish women who like Pork (you could totally make this a joke in more than one way):
or if we’d like to be extra creepy (or maybe just find that special someone) you can ask Facebook for Single women who live nearby and who like 50 Shades of Grey:
Hilariously, the 50 shades Graph Search turned up someone I went to high school with (but I scrolled down so as to not show her face. The bottom line is that like Facebook claims, “Now you can use simple, specific phrases like “Photos my friends took in New York City” and you really can find anything you want. The shitty part is that Facebook retroactively included things you shared prior to it’s new Graph Search being implemented.
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