Believe it or not, Facebook wants you to tell it who or what you sleep with

Reshima
Sharma

• 
  Facebook has been asking users to tell it what they
  "usually sleep with."
  


• 
  It's not clear if the bizarrely intrusive question is
  discussing sexual preferences or more family-friendly bedtime
  habits.
  


• 
  It's part of a new feature that prompts users to share
  stories about their lives and answer hypothetical
  questions.
  

---

Facebook has been asking some of its users an unusual — and
intrusive — question: Who or what are you sleeping with?

The social network is increasingly prompting users to answer
questions and finish sentences describing their lives via its new
"Did You Know?" feature. Most of these are fairly innocuous
queries or fun hypotheticals — "When I don't like a gift, I..."
for example, or "If I could choose to be teleported anywhere or
read people's minds, I'd rather..."

But it's also asking some of its members to complete a rather
more intimate sentence that has left many users baffled: "I
usually sleep with..."

There are two very different ways two interpret the prompt. It
could be asking users about their sexual partners and sexual
preferences, or — far more likely — what their more PG-friendly
sleeping habits are. Do they tuck in at night with a teddy bear,
for example, or a hot water bottle, or a comforter?

But given the vague wording, it's not clear.

British parliamentary researcher Reshima Sharma is one of the
people who saw the pop-up. (Full disclosure, she's a friend
of the author's.) Her first impression was that Facebook was
asking her about her sexual partners, she said.

"I guess you can read it two ways maybe," she told Business
Insider in a message. "But it's difficult to give Facebook the
benefit of the doubt when its 'did you know' feature also asks
you to publish weirdly personal questions like 'the last time I
went through a tough time was...' and 'if I could change one
thing about my significant other it would be...'"

She wasn't the only one to receive the message and respond with
revulsion.

A Facebook spokesperson did not indulge Business Insider's
request to clear up the confusion.

Facebook
launched the "Did You Know" feature relatively recently, in
December 2017, as a way to get people to volunteer more info
about themselves and share off-beat facts and details about their
lives.

The social network is reportedly
battling a decline in people sharing statuses and updates about
their lives, and has come under intense scrutiny over its
impact on society in recent months.
It's now tweaking its algorithm to show users more content from
their friends, in what seems to be an attempt to encourage
them to share more — and the "Did You Know" prompts are a novel
way to try and encourage this. 

Some of these efforts, however, could do with being a little less
invasive.

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