How would Bob know the list of ten people he's received is nic's private list of friends? If Bob is a real account and he goes on adding more friends, at the end of the day the lists of ten people he receives would probably be drawn randomly from some of the people connected with his added connections. But the fact that these people could be the connections of Bob's connections would still not come to Bob's knowledge as such. I beg to differ from nic's view regarding privacy. Instead, I think Facebook wants to affirm Bob's privacy by making sure that those connected to Bob's connections are not Bob's official friends. Sometimes, there is a need to make certain that, if you know what I mean. There is even a possibility that Facebook is under pressure to do so. If Bob knows none of those in those lists, these generated lists would appear as mere lists of strangers to Bob. And Bob would not have any idea who these people are connected with. You see what I mean? Then, by Bob's not adding anyone from those lists generated every so often, the system officially confirms that these are not Bob's friends. And that's why the system asks Bob every so often if these so and so and eight others are people Bob knows as friends, but Bob is free to choose to add from those lists if he spots anyone he does know as his true friends. By so doing the system, in the form of questionnaires, checks the facts regularly to seek confirmations, mostly for expected negative answers. And dated records are then filed to the system regularly for periodic statistical tallying to calculate growth of social networks of the system's members. I hope that answers the question. I guess this is what the system does with those automatically generated lists.
With all those generated lists I received in the past, those people were never marked by the system as who's whose friends. I have no ideas who those people are and who they are connected with. So to those people whose connections have been featured in these people lists and who are someone's private connections, it is not felt that the system has divulged who on those lists are specifically whose connections. To me I don't find a privacy issue in them.
I can give you a real good example to explain further what I mean as a case in point. I have a Facebook account that has not yet added any friends. So my friends list is 0. But I still receive those generated lists of 10 people occasionally. So whose connections are they?
But of course, I'm only commenting on the privacy issue regarding these people lists. Of course, I can't say for sure about other privacy issues of Facebook.
