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Facebook Knows Your Political Preferences (businessinsider.com)

Posted by msmash on from the social-brother dept.

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.

5 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder how much Facebook knows... by Zombie+Ryushu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder how much Facebook knows... about it's non-Users.

    1. Re:I wonder how much Facebook knows... by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wonder how much Facebook knows... about it's non-Users.

      I'm sure Facebook doesn't have any "non-users" in its mind.
      You're either a willing (registered) user or an unwilling (shadow profile) one.

  2. Good luck by nwaack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Correction by HaaPoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Facebook THINKS it Knows Your Political Preferences , i can promise you it is getting it wrong for my preference.

  4. Can I see? by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
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