That's a possibility. The post that Keith Adams made however refutes this, but it is still possible that he is wrong/mistaken or that the first_degree.php was changed after he left Facebook.
I should have been more clear. Keith seems to indicate that views from other users don't affect your first_degree.php. I disagree, here was my process:
I built a dummy account in incognito that is friends with with my regularly used profile (A) and a profile owned by a friend of mine (B). All friend requests were made from A & B TO the dummy. I then checked the first_degree.php of the dummy, as expected, me and my friend were first. Perhaps not surprisingly, the next people on the list were the intersection of A & B 's friend lists.
Now I logged back in to A, knowing that B wasn't searching for the dummy, and searched for the dummy a few times a day for a couple days (I learned about first_degree a couple weeks ago).
Checking the dummy's first_degree showed that friends passed A & B had more of A's friends.
My guess is that Keith is right in general. I might not be able to move myself up the ladder of the dummy, but I can change the Facebook Social Graph by changing my viewing behavior. The machine generated list uses that graph to determine first_degree. Even if it's indirect, it means first_degree can be influenced by searches of others. Or I'm wrong!
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That's a possibility. The post that Keith Adams made however refutes this, but it is still possible that he is wrong/mistaken or that the first_degree.php was changed after he left Facebook.
I should have been more clear. Keith seems to indicate that views from other users don't affect your first_degree.php. I disagree, here was my process:
I built a dummy account in incognito that is friends with with my regularly used profile (A) and a profile owned by a friend of mine (B). All friend requests were made from A & B TO the dummy. I then checked the first_degree.php of the dummy, as expected, me and my friend were first. Perhaps not surprisingly, the next people on the list were the intersection of A & B 's friend lists.
Now I logged back in to A, knowing that B wasn't searching for the dummy, and searched for the dummy a few times a day for a couple days (I learned about first_degree a couple weeks ago).
Checking the dummy's first_degree showed that friends passed A & B had more of A's friends.
My guess is that Keith is right in general. I might not be able to move myself up the ladder of the dummy, but I can change the Facebook Social Graph by changing my viewing behavior. The machine generated list uses that graph to determine first_degree. Even if it's indirect, it means first_degree can be influenced by searches of others. Or I'm wrong!