>> "my friends list has a bunch of people I don't even know"
WHY? This is consistently one of the biggest complaints about Facebook. I can understand people who've had Facebook since it's early days having this problem but if you just opened your account why did you add people you don't know?
Because Facebook gets really confused about it. Their "list of people you may know" is quite off, they can't recommend any bar or club in my hometown because I never even listed it as my location. Even the "meet singles in your areas" ads are off. This way, I can stay in touch with my friends and not be a marketing tool for Facebook.
Edit: just to make sure I get my message across the way I want to: I do this because I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, but more importantly because:
a) I hate targeted advertising. If I make a purchase decision, I want to make sure I make it based on actual information, not clever advertising. Avoiding clever advertising is a good way for me not to bump into it.
b) I really think this is wrong. I am a programmer myself, and I think platforms like Facebook are definitely not the way technology should be used. Of course, not all of my friends share the same principles, and I don't want that to be an obstacle; I found this to be a reasonable middle ground.
It'll likely throw off the marketers, at least for a while, but I hope you are aware that if anyone at a 3 letter agency, or even anyone at facebook, cared about you - that it will take them exactly 3 seconds to drop the noise.
> It'll likely throw off the marketers, at least for a while
Nah, you just get adverts you care even less about than those which have a chance of being some measurable fraction of relevant.
Most of the adverts I see seem to be based on what my contacts have "like"d, or otherwise interacted with, more than what I have done (though this could be in part due to me providing fb with a lot less info to work on than some of my contacts do) so providing fake information about yourself will make little difference there unless your contacts all do the same.
Empirically, it seems to work so far. My likes are quite eclectic, too, but that's by my design -- my homepage gets feeds related to Machete Kills and Oscar Wilde because I actually like both. Most of the ads are obviously wrong (hair conditioning products and club wear; I'm bald and hate clubs).
I honestly don't care about targeted advertising. Irrelevant advertising works fine for me.
Of course. I'm not running from any 3-letter agency, just from overly-aggressive marketers. If I ever did anything a 3-letter agency would be interested in, it definitely wouldn't be on the Internet.
I was confused at first too, but I think the idea is to throw off who Facebook, or anyone looking through Facebook's data, thinks you are. Quoting:
I hate Facebook's privacy policy (or lack of thereof)
If you only add real friends, there's too much signal and not enough noise to cover it up. This is in line with using tor and using fake locations that change frequently.
Yup, you nailed it. I also don't "check Facebook" too often for that to be annoying, and my list of friends isn't all that huge. It's less than 50 people, including the people I don't know.
I only stay in touch with people I want to stay in touch with. There are no ex-colleagues-from-that-job-i-left-four-years-ago-whom-i-met-at-that-concert-an-year-ago-but-can't-quite-remember-their-name. Close friends with whom I really do have links to share and things to chat about.
WHY? This is consistently one of the biggest complaints about Facebook. I can understand people who've had Facebook since it's early days having this problem but if you just opened your account why did you add people you don't know?