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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.
... 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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Friend, here's what's more likely than not to happen when you do that: it'll appear to clear them out, so far as the user-facing page shows, but Facebook won't 'throw away' that data, they'll just keep it in secret, where the user can't see it anymore. Remember: Facebook does not throw any data away, ever, because it's all salable merchandise. The only way to possibly win this game is to not play in the first place (i.e. never have a Facebook account to start with). You can delete you Facebook account and never go back and 10 years from now their data will be so stale that it'll be irrelevant anymore, but they'll never delete it.
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.