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Facebook Has Considered Profiling Its Users' Personalities and Using the Information To Target Ads (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the of-course-it-has dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A patent filed by the social network describes how personality characteristics, including emotional stability, could be determined from people's messages and status updates. The firm is currently embroiled in a privacy scandal over the use of its data by a political consultancy. Facebook says it has never used the personality test in its products. The patent, first filed in 2012, is in the names of Michael Nowak and Dean Eckles. Mr Nowak has worked for Facebook for 10 years, while Prof Eckles now teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The patent has been updated twice, most recently in 2016. The BBC has seen emails from Mr Eckles and other Facebook staff to University of Cambridge psychologists in which they discuss analysis of data to infer personality traits, and talk of using such research to improve the product for users and advertisers.

7 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. This is news? by TheZeitgeist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe on CNN with their readers. But on Slashdot I think going assumption is outfits like Facebook try manipulating every piece of info on a user to target stupid ads.

    Tomorrow we'll learn Facebook tried not-so-PC datapoints to target mortgage ads. Stuff like sexy preferences or what race the user might be etc. Everyone will be in shock I guess - except me because I assume they're doing that already. I would guess most Slashers are in same boat.

    1. Re:This is news? by stealth_finger · · Score: 2

      Exactly, they can target all the ads they want, they are going to be ignored and on the rare off chance they might put up an ad for something I want and end up getting then surely it's a win-win, although it probably wouldn't be through whatever ad but still.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    2. Re:This is news? by bogaboga · · Score: 2

      ... they can target all the ads they want, they are going to be ignored...

      In the meantime, they make billions in profit. Who cares about what you do anyway?

    3. Re:This is news? by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      Is it that hard to imagine? Coca Cola cares about selling more bottles of Coke and not at all about going into outer space (unless we find some aliens out there they can sling Cokes to). They'll pay anyone who can help them accomplish the former and don't want to spend a dime on the latter. Unless you have the good fortune (or perhaps misfortune depending on how you look at it) of already have enough wealth to live comfortably on for the remainder of your days, the job opportunities for those lofty aims of yours are rather limited and most of us have bills to pay which means finding someone willing to pay for our skills and talents.

  2. Already do by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    Don't the big players already do this to a degree? I search for "underwear" online and then for the next 6 months see a thousand underwear ads on different sites. It's creepy and annoying. Profiling a personality is just a generalization of the technique.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Already do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Whenever co-workers are away from their desks, I do a quick search for "happy ending gay massage parlor" from their computer and then close the tab.

  3. Re: It looks like you might be psycho by Reverend+Green · · Score: 2

    Interesting. So in the Fake-Progressive dialect of Newspeak, "psycho" means "decent red-blooded American who is unenthusiastic about serfdom". Thanks, good to know!