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Facebook Knows Your Political Preferences (businessinsider.com)
Facebook knows a lot more about its users than they think. For instance, the New York Times reports, the company is categorizing its users as liberal, conservative, or moderate. These details are valuable for advertisers and campaign managers, especially ahead of the election season. From a BusinessInsider report: For some, Facebook is able to come to conclusions about your political leanings easily, if you mention a political party on your page. For those that are less open about politics on social media, Facebook makes assumptions based on pages you like. As The New York Times explained, if you like Ben and Jerry's Facebook page and most of the other people that like that page identify as liberal, Facebook might assume you too are liberal.
Probably because you keep posting and sharing political garbage all day long
No they don't. They don't even recognise the spaghetti monster as a political party :(.
I wonder how much Facebook knows... about it's non-Users.
I'm a fiscally conservative, social moderate who hates Obama, has multiple openly gay friends, and generally votes libertarian when possible. Good luck categorizing that! Maybe that's why I usually just see ads for "Women get it free" on the rare occasion that I'm on the site.
Considering that probably 50% of the stuff I post on my timeline is politicians behaving badly (either party) or stupidly (lately, heavily Republican, but let's be fair, most of that is Trump), and another fair chunk of stuff I post is pro-LGBTQ, I would honestly be more surprised if Facebook couldn't figure out I was liberal.
I mean, we're not exactly talking a tough determination in my case.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Facebook THINKS it Knows Your Political Preferences , i can promise you it is getting it wrong for my preference.
It's not a secret. I don't run around with Trump/Pence bumper stickers on my car, but I'm happy to discuss politics and how to make America great again with anyone that wants to have a civil discussion about it. If it's important to you that your political bent be a closely guarded secret, perhaps running around liking everything on FB isn't something you should be doing to start with.
story. I very much want to know this too. I don't have a Facebook account but all family and whatnot do. I try to get my g/f to not post pictures and things of me but she does it anyway. I would love to see the profile they have of me (and what recourse there is for its removal). I have no doubt that there is one.
These days, your political preference is easier to tell than your gender. That's not even factoring into account that they seem to categorize politics into three buckets and gender into over 70.
1/
since i have not used or logged in to my facebook account,(which is in my real but very common name that many others share) after initial signing up, and since i have variety of tracking blockers which do block facebook trackers in other websites, they have no data.
only people trapped in facebook's walled garden can think it is all that powerful.
more difficult to avoid the reach of that other ad pusher google.
2/
they are way too confident in their algorithms that categorize users. i have seen enough wrong headed google ads/recommendations/etc to know that they have a wrong idea about my preferences on many things.
As you can see in the comments, Facebook will get right most of the political preferences, but not from the slashdot users. They're too special, unique snowflakes!
It's not like they try and hide that they're doing this (at least for me): if I don't use incognito mode, then go on any site even a little political or controversial that has facebook's trackers, I get flooded with suggestions related to whatever leanings that site has.
And they know who your friends are, and what times you'll online and what games you play the most. They even know what you look like!
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I'd like to see what they say about me. I bash both parties all the time. My comments on every subject are usually sarcastic. Do they have a working sarcasm detector? Or is it all about the things you follow? George Takei is a gay rights activist. So would a conservative who likes ice cream (ben and jerrys) and George Takei be labeled liberal?
Or is someone who is far-left who attacks Hillary going to be labeled conservative for being anti-Democrat?
I've seen those types of labels applied. They never work. I got rejected from a minimum wage job in college because the chain store had a standard questionaire. If you answered that you don't use drugs, but think they should be legal, you were considered a lying drug user. The makers of the test couldn't conceive of someone who thinks drugs should be legal and regulated, and wouldn't use them if they were. Though, this was 20+ years ago, so the modern legalization swing wasn't popular yet.
I can only think that the labels are wrong much of the time, and the effectiveness of them is over-stated to increase Facebook's ad income.
Learn to love Alaska
I try to get my g/f to not post pictures and things of me but she does it anyway.
Not respecting your request for privacy is a ditch reason.
Seriously, I cannot see how any relationship can last without trust and respecting each other's wishes. Even when not deemed important. Especially when not deemed important.
People can generally guess a lot about you, based on things you say and do. No fancypants machine learning necessary.
So, liberals like to pay premium prices for mediocre frozen desserts?
sig: sauer
are they going to send their geeks to your house to take away your precious guns because you like the redstatewatcher.com page? or any other right wing rag on the internet?
Since I'm not a fool who still uses Failbook, Failbook knows NOTHING about me whatsoever.
You're a fool.
There's extensive datacollection from Facebook on other web sites, tied to cookies, browser fingerprinting and various other means.
Even here on Slashdot.
Combine that with friends and acquaintances that might post about you, or pictures that contain you.
There is a "Political Views" field available for you to set in your profile. Nothing sinister going on if you specify "Very Liberal" and Facebook therefore knows you're probably pretty liberal.
Imagine all the people...
Guessing and assuming should really give them a solid data set.
I'm a fiscally conservative, social moderate who hates Obama, has multiple openly gay friends, and generally votes libertarian when possible. Good luck categorizing that!
It is possible to predict political preferences beyond looking at what you say about some of the defining issues. Your biology has been shown to be linked to your affiliations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Also this study http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...
And then there is what you eat. http://www.livescience.com/143...
Or how smart you are. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
Having said that, in the end, they are probably just counting how many Trump photos have been posted by the account.
I have a FB account, but I rarely use it. I certainly don't talk politics on it, nor do I click on the dumb crap, political or otherwise, that pops up on it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
the boating spaghetti monster party will promise new pool noodles for all new memebers
Sure, summer's almost over on the top half of the globe, but it's still warm enough for a good pool party, even if it does get political.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
>"Facebook knows a lot more about its users than they think. For instance, the New York Times reports, the company is categorizing its users as liberal, conservative, or moderate. "
First, it doesn't know more than I think... but, then, I am not a user.
In any case, the political spectrum is not a single scale of left and right. Never has been. That is a gross over-simplification of how things actually are. "Conservative" and "Liberal" mean absolutely nothing out of context. You can be conservative economically and liberal socially, for example.
See this for interesting information and a test: https://www.politicalcompass.o...
my g/f
Oh boo hoo hoo. You insensitive clod.
You're just jealous.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I seriously have never seen an astroturf campaign so far gone for a candidate as for Hillary. It actually doesn't matter what your political preferences are, just that they shove as much pro-Hillary shit into your feed. They honestly believe they can influence people's preferences by bashing or censoring all of the other candidates, and I do actually mean Gary Johnson and Jill Stein here more than the obvious bashing of Trump since Johnson and Stein are a million times more honest than the two front-runners.
People need to realize that Facebook (or Twitter, or any other social or non-social media) is not a news source any more, but a reflection of the political will of those who own it. My greatest concern is that so many people are too ignorant to realize it because of the funny pictures and friends' photos in their feed.
How else would they figure out how efficiently and effectively suppress conservative content while retaining SOCJUS adherents?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
As The New York Times explained, if you like Ben and Jerry's Facebook page and most of the other people that like that page identify as liberal, Facebook might assume you too are liberal.
Perhaps you all should just assume we all like ice cream.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Assume" is not the same as "know".
Facebook is categorising the vast majority as liberal.
There is one country, however, where the mix is more evenly distributed. I'll give you a hint as to which country that is: to them, the world also includes the Toronto Bluejays.
All the pro-hillary stuff in my feed gets there because a specific person shares it. He's toned it down. I wasn't the only person to tell him to be more selective, or I'd mute him.
Learn to love Alaska
They got me dead wrong on a lot of things on the Ad preferences page.
Google on the other hand, is much better at this and I find using their stuff to be much less intrusive somehow.
https://www.google.com/setting...
Even *I* don't know my own political preference.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
But she is not interested in rounding up everyone, only Sarah Connor.
Also expect google to get a lot more funding for some specific projects.
> You're a fool. There's extensive datacollection from Facebook on other web sites, tied
> to cookies, browser fingerprinting and various other means. Even here on Slashdot.
IP ranges to block...
31.13.24.0 - 31.13.31.255
31.13.24.0/21
IE-FACEBOOK-20110418
Facebook Ireland Ltd
IE
31.13.64.0 - 31.13.127.255
31.13.64.0/18
AMS2
Facebook
NL
66.220.144.0 - 66.220.159.255
66.220.144.0/20
Facebook, Inc.
THEFA-3
69.63.176.0 - 69.63.191.255
69.63.176.0/20
Facebook, Inc.
THEFA-3
69.171.224.0 - 69.171.255.255
69.171.224.0/19
Facebook, Inc.
TFBNET
74.119.76.0 - 74.119.79.255
74.119.76.0/22
Facebook, Inc.
TFBNET4
103.4.96.0 - 103.4.99.255
103.4.96.0/22
FACEBOOK-SG
173.252.64.0 - 173.252.127.255
173.252.64.0/18
AS32934
FACEBOOK-INC
204.15.20.0 - 204.15.23.255
204.15.20.0/22
Facebook, Inc.
TFBNET1
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Regardless of how many news stories, ads, or posts I tell it to hide, FB remains clueless about my tastes. It will suggest I join groups I just left, buy products I just bought, recommend befriending people I never heard of.
So much effort, when blocking *.facebook.com would do...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's why you need to be bombarded by ads. If you already certainly voted for him, why bother blowing sugar up your tush?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Abortion? Great, let's have a coat-hanger party! Less people competing for the resources of the planet? Count me in!
Religion? Personally, I think people above the age of 8 who have imaginary friends should get therapy.
Immigration? Ask Germany what they did with the Spring-guns that were mounted on the German-German border. They don't need them anymore and there should be plenty of them lying about. As for the rest of the border, since you can't really use landmines in wars anymore...
LGTBQ? Gesundheit. Pick a fucking gender, will ya?
So, where do I stand? Am I too eager to let people do whatever they fucking want to be a conservative or not enough bleeding-heart compassionate to be a liberal?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The last decent PRESIDENT that country had was Eisenhower. Fuck, his corpse could run this time and would win!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The trick is not to avoid data collection. That's impossible. The trick is to poison the data. Insert data that is incorrect and outright forged. When you can't tell real from fake data anymore, you essentially have no data at all.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Forget advertisers, this is a boon for academic political science and sociology research. Facebook has such massive data sets that there could be dozens or hundreds of unknown correlates of political preference, behavior, and decision making. Not to mention responses to outcomes and conditions.
I can't think of any University that wouldn't want to get its hands on this data. I hope Facebook makes it available to academia.
I just use it as a single point of log in for games. So really doubt they know for sure.
Of course they could assume based on my location, but that's not a highly accurate assessment.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
Pretty much, yes.
You can take steps to reduce data collection, but thinking you can stop it is naive. You can poison the well, and make it difficult for the collectors to find meaningful correlations, but even that can give them data.
That there's no PI traffic from a specific IP, or there appears to be 700 different people at one residential address might raise a flag with those who peer over the collectors' shoulders.
And for advertisers, if all the cookies are blocked with ad blockers, inserting in-page same-server ads for security products might yield better results - because they do know something about you.
Proxy servers and avoiding https is a good way to reduce the amount of data you disclose. But advertisers in general and Google in particular is waging a war on proxy servers and http, and want end-to-end encryption under the false flag of security, while in reality it ensures that they know who connects, when. You trade privacy you want for security you don't need.
Now, then: let's discuss why you're still being a dumb cuck who uses Failbook. Do you like Zukerberg being your Master? Or are you just too weak to leave?
I don't have a Facebook account, and don't go to Facebook. But I have no delusions that this means they don't collect data on me. Cookies, trackers, other sites sharing data with FB, public records, users of Facebook and connected services posting group pictures - they do get data. On you too.
As for you not using your real name online anywhere, I take it you don't use online banking or online ordering then. Ever.
All it takes is an online vendor who gets the real name also fingerprinting the browser through an embedded image or js snippet, and forwarding the data to Facebook. Now they know exactly who it is when the same user browses Slashdot, who also has trackers.
Even your idiolect, using words like 'EVER', 'cuck', 'Failbook' and 'Master' with a capital M, and multiple questions in a row gives data collection algorithms valuablee correlation points, so they can match user1 at one site with user2 on another, so they gather what topics you commented on even on a site that doesn't have trackers.
You and others give online companies information about you all the time. Believing otherwise is being naive.
In Belgium I once used a site similar to http://www.istandwith.com/ but for Belgium. First I took the test and came to a conclusion that I was not voting for the correct party.So I took it more serious the next time with more finetuning. Took a fair bit of my time. About an hour or so.and again landed with that same party that I thought was the wrong one.Then I looked into the party I thought I should be voting for and I looked at what the computer told me I should be voting for and it seemed that the computer was right.
It was right about me and knew my political preference better than I did.
I know that the majority of people who take the test and land with a different conclusion will come up with why the computer was wrong and why they were right and find or make up excuses. It just prooves that voting is not so mutch a rational process, but more an emotional process.
I changed the party I should vote for instead of changing my point of view. Many people are not willing to do that and will stand with their party till they die, because that it how they think it should be.
This is at least true for everybody who I talked with about this. Remember that Belgium is a multy party system, where you can vote from almost extreme right up to comunism and eerything in between.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If I recall you can list it along with your relationship and employment status, I haven't logged into Facebook in like I year so I could be wrong.
That largely depends on whether you allow third-party cookies to be set. Anybody who cares about privacy in the least would have third-party cookies disabled. Let Farcebook try to snoop on my /. activity...it's not gonna work.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
That largely depends on whether you allow third-party cookies to be set. Anybody who cares about privacy in the least would have third-party cookies disabled. Let Farcebook try to snoop on my /. activity...it's not gonna work.
There are still images and scripts embedded, where your web browser sends headers to the remote site. Unless you scrub the headers and IP by going through a proxy server, you're still providing them information.
http://panopticlick.eff.org/tr...
Moderate is NOT a word to use to describe my political views. Nor is conservative. Nor is liberal...
I'm most closely a "Communist Libertarian"....and am an odd hodgepodge. I passionately supported Bernie Sanders, but vehemently oppose Hillary Clinton. I'm pro-gun, and would rather see a national healthcare program than this horrendous mess. I think Trump's tax plan is much better than HRC. I support Black Lives Matter. I'm just a mess politically.
Guess... I'm just a bloody American!