Facebook’s algorithm is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world. It goes without saying there is a huge and complex secret world going on in that profile of yours that none of us will ever see let alone understand, and it’s made up of millions of lines of code that have taken more than six years and hundreds of coding wizards countless hours to create.
Remember that scene in David Fincher’s The Social Network when Mark Zuckerberg’s friend Eduardo Saverin writes the very first Facebook algorithm on Mark’s dorm window? Well, that code has grown much bigger now, and each time you engage on Facebook their algorithm is learning a little bit more about you. The same goes for when others engage with you, and depending on how old your Facebook account is the FB team in Palo Alto, California has continuously been crunching your data to get a pretty good idea of who your closest friends are. And now there’s an easy, effortless way for you lift the veil of mystery and see this list for yourself. Here’s how to do it:
1) Go onto your own profile page, right click anywhere, and select “View Page Source”.
2) Use the keyboard shortcut COMMAND + F to search the HTML source code for “OrderedFriendsListInitialData”.
3) Your computer will instantly pull up this batch of code. Just below the highlighted text you will notice a long list of 9-digit numbers. You want to select and copy all of this list, beginning with the very first number (DO NOT INCLUDE THE FIRST QUOTATION MARK) and ending with the very last 9-digit number (DO NOT INCLUDE THE LAST QUOTATION MARK).
4) Copy this text and paste it in the window on THIS WEBSITE and click enter. It might take a few seconds, but simply scroll down and they will reveal this top secret list of your “best friends”.
