My goal is to collect a random sample (not that big - several thousands would be enough) of Facebook accounts (at least profiles, but it also would be good to collect pages/groups) from one certain country. The sample is needed for social research.
I have read official API and topics like this and this on SO and figured out that it is impossible to achieve with official API because there is no way to search accounts by country or even location.
I've also tried to google some third-party services and found https://searchisback.com/, but it only works if I am logged in Facebook, otherwise I see error. And results of this search seem to be user-dependent, not random, therefore not valid for the research.
Likewise, I tried to look for some sort of a private API, something similar to Instagram Private API. But searching through the github didn't yield any tangible results.
So, the only way I see - to randomly choose ids and check if the accounts are from needed country (if they specify their location at all) until I gather my several thousands sample. The problem here is that the probability of getting account from one certain country is quite low while facebook has rate limits so it can take months to collect the sample.
Finally, the question is - am I missing something? Maybe there are some third-party services or libraries suitable for my task?
