Meta’s (formerly Facebook’s) algorithms constantly monitor users’ behaviour to best adapt its services and advertising content to them.
Messenger, for example, which is part of the service, works in an interesting way. When a user clicks on a search engine on Messenger, a list of suggested people is displayed.
When I looked through my list of suggested people on Messenger, I was a bit surprised. I had the impression that the people were selected in a completely illogical way. So I decided to delve deeper into the topic and see how the algorithms select contacts in Messenger.
If you are also interested in this topic, I encourage you to read my post today. In it, you will also find practical instructions on how to remove suggested people in Messenger.
Suggested people on Messenger – what is this list and how does it work?
Suggested people is a list of contacts that Messenger considers a user would like to write to first. These people are selected based on mutual interactions. The more often we text with someone, like and comment on their posts, reply to Stories and view their profile, the more likely they are to be on our suggested contacts list.
Interestingly, the list of suggested contacts can also include people outside of our Facebook friends. This is usually the case if we have previously chatted with the person on Messenger.
How does Messenger select suggested people?
Below, I’ve described in more detail the factors that most influence the composition of the suggested list on Messenger:
Messenger conversations
How often we talk to a person on Messenger has the biggest impact on whether or not they will be included in our suggested friends. A person we text a lot with will be put at the top of the list, even if they are not among our friends.
Communication in Messenger is a key factor that the algorithm takes into account. It’s even logical – if we talk to someone often, it means we want to be able to contact them easily and conveniently.
Profile views
Another factor that largely determines the composition of our list of suggested people is whose profiles we view. The more often we view a person’s profile, the more the algorithm will encourage us to contact them, just by including them in our suggested people list in Messenger.
Interactions
Who we leave likes and comments for on Facebook also has an impact on how our suggested people list in Messenger shapes up. Since we show interactions with a particular person’s publications, the algorithm recognises this as a sign that they are interesting to us in some way and that we might want to talk to them.
Friends with whom you have something in common
The list of suggested people often includes friends with whom you have some kind of shared history – such as work, school, university, attending the same event or belonging to a group.
Friends who have tagged you
The fact that someone has tagged us on Facebook is also a signal to the algorithm that we have something in common with them. Therefore, such a person may appear in our list of proposed contacts.
How do I remove suggested people from Messenger?
Perhaps you are not entirely happy with Messenger’s suggestions and are annoyed by the fact that it shows you a list of suggested people. If this is the case, you can try removing it by using the instructions below. However, I can’t guarantee that they will be successful in your case. For me, the following methods only helped on one account, which I cannot explain.
How to remove suggested people from Messenger. Method I
- Open Messenger
- Click on your profile icon in the top left corner
- Find Phone Contacts >> Manage Contacts
- Click the Delete All Contacts button
- Log out and log back into Messenger. You should no longer see the suggested people.
How to remove suggested people from Messenger. Method II
- Open your phone’s Settings
- Select Applications
- Find the Messenger app in the list
- Depending on your smartphone model, select Memory or Default memory
- Click Clear data
Hopefully, using any of the above instructions, you have managed to delete the list of suggested people on Messenger.
In summary, Messenger suggests people it thinks are interesting to us. Algorithms track users’ activities all the time and draw conclusions based on this, creating a network of connections.
I think the list of suggested people on Messenger could be useful, but at the moment it is not yet perfected. Nevertheless, it can already give us an interesting insight into how artificial intelligence algorithms see us.
