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Most Facebook Users Don't Know That it Records a List of Their Interests, New Study Finds (theverge.com)
Seventy-four percent of Facebook users are unaware that Facebook records a list of their interests for ad-targeting purposes, according to a new study from the Pew Institute. From a report: Participants in the study were first pointed to Facebook's ad preferences page, which lists out a person's interests. Nearly 60 percent of participants admitted that Facebook's lists of interests were very or somewhat accurate to their actual interests, and 51 percent said they were uncomfortable with Facebook creating the list.
This link should take you to your Ad Preferences. Be sure to click on both "Interests" and "Advertisers" - and check the sub-tabs.
The shit that shows up there is bizarre. Today FB decided one of my interests was "brake shoes". And in the Advertisers section, I see a significant (literally hundreds) of non-local real estate agents and car dealers. Not sure why I'd be interested in either a car dealer or a realtor several thousand miles from where I actually live. But then, FB decided a couple months ago I live near Fargo ND. (If they really had their shit together, it would be obvious which county I live in NH, given some of the groups I subscribe to.)
... the worse Facebook looks.
Seriously? There’s going to be film at 11?!? Awesome, let me get the popcorn and...
...hey, wait a minute...
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This is known as a false positive. It doesn't really matter because what advertisers are interested in is the achievable true positive rate. When a Mormon sees a superbowl ad for beer, sure that's a wasted impression, but it doesn't matter as long as they reach the beer drinkers.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You can actually download a file of all of the things that facebook has on you(messages, voice messages, videos, pictures, personal details..etc). It was quite a shocking discovery for me after I downloaded it. You can find it by going to settings - your facebook information - download your information. And then you can check what types of info you want. It takes some time for them to compile it all, but that's pretty creepy.
Most Facebook users have the attention span of a ferret on bad biker meth, can't be bothered to read (let alone understand) EULAs and Privacy Agreements, and likely doesn't even know what the 'Ad Preferences' page is let alone what's on it. Facebook depends on this ignorance to preserve their salable data stream.
Most people's interests aren't really a secret (except for the ones they might want to hide, and those shouldn't be on FaceBook). People need to stop seeing everything as an opportunity to rant.
Regardless of what things FaceBook may be guilty of, not everything in FB, or in life is out to take advantage of us in some sort of zero-sum game. There are win-win situations being sought as well. I've received ads for books on several occasions that were targeted at me based on other books I had liked. I've found some good ones that way and I'd rather see ads for those than for cookbooks or Harlequin romances.
When I advertised my own books, written for a niche genre, I knew what books had inspired me most, and that people that had enjoyed them were the most likely to enjoy mine. With FB I was able to direct my ads to those people. I got a good response for the money I spent, and got several good reviews (without any negative ones). It seems to me those people were happy they had learned of my books and were pleased with their purchases.
What would be served for anyone in my paying far more just to blindly send a lot more ads to people who wouldn't be the least bit interested? That's not a win for them or for me.
Sign in so we can show you ads better targeted at You!
No shit, Facebook thinks people care about that. Extremely curious when the whipper-snappers will wake up and just talk to their friends.
I regularly visit my ad preferences to remove and even add things that make sense. This way, I get advertisements for things that I actually want, like new book releases, offers from cloud computing companies, and sales on education classes.
Sure, they're 'advertisements' from those companies, but if I'm going to see ads, I'd rather see ads for things that actually interest me and keep me informed about new products that I can research more information about later.
Did you see the Gillette commercial? Stopping bullying is not demasculating. Treating women with respect is not demasculating. Acting in a civilized manner should not be a rarity. None of the men shown acting badly in the ad would have been considered good role models, and all the commercial was doing was trying to raise the bar in behavior by showing different role models.
I think what happened is that some people saw the Gillette commercial and were triggered by it.
"Most Facebook Users Don't Know That it Records a List of Their Interests, New Study Finds "
TRANSLATION:
"Most Facebook Users Are Clueless Morons, New Study Finds "
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...