Main takeaway from this: Facebook know much less about me than I thought. Maybe the whole online advertising industry is an emperor's-new-clothes situation.
My favourite bands appear to be Blaise Matuidi (who is a footballer - I don't even know who he plays for though), Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, and Kool & The Gang. My favourite sports entities are Team and Kool & The Gang. Under food & drink I have been correctly identified as a fan of water.
I'm a pretty active Facebook user too, so it's not like they have a death of data.
If by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" you mean the paranoia about what these companies "know" about individuals, I agree. But since at least Google's revenue last year was $75 billion, it's clearly valuable to have statistically significant information about groups of people.
I think that people who are worried about data that others have on them would be better served by worrying about data brokers first, though: https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-... (though again, I think that the amount these people know and sell to others is less than a small town shopkeeper would know about their patrons 100 years ago).
I think by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" GP is referring to the possibility that companies are paying for advertising based on the notion that it will be targeted using sophisticated metadata on users, but that the metadata is in fact far less sophisticated than touted.
One would think that all significant ad spend by sane companies is made in the context of an empirical study demonstrating the uptick in the relevant metrics caused by (smaller) ad spend. But honestly, I share the suspicions of the GP, that western capitalism in certain areas (e.g. Bro-y advertising) is influenced more by group think and connections and unthinking continuation of established business practices, than by truly objective data-driven decision making.
>though again, I think that the amount these people know and sell to others is less than a small town shopkeeper would know about their patrons 100 years ago
but a shopkeeper 100 years ago would have longstanding relationships with those people, they would have to face significant consequences if they used this information to swindle people. They have as much stake in maintaining an honest relationship as the shopper, its a symbiotic relationship.
a distributed system of databases owned and traded by conglomerates has none of that
I am one of those weirdos who is not on Facebook, but I have come to a similar conclusion about Google. The ads that I am served are almost funny sometimes.
Just because they’re not showing you all the data and analysis capabilities they have doesn’t mean they don’t have them. Why would Facebook waste their effort making sure that all user data is exposed through their decrepit and intentionally hidden ads preferences section when they could spend that effort analyzing that data and making it available to their partners?
I've had the same conclusion for a while. I'm not a social media junkie, but I use Facebook often enough that they should know a lot about me but their ads and their algorithmic content show that they have a long way to go in getting a computer to actually understand my behavior and interests.
I really love the list of "advertisers whose ads you may see because you're on a contact list they uploaded to Facebook" that includes a bunch of people I don't know and with whom I have no affiliation.
Thanks. This is awesome. About the only thing they have right about me is under Interests: 'Women'. Ethnic affinity is Asian, which is wrong. I don't have a US Politics box
I get nothing at all. Maybe that's because I have never clicked on or published anything related to politics, I only share "sciency" links (and none related to politics). I long ago decided that the best way to "lose friends and alienate people" [0] is to push political content to your network.
[0] To those (few?) who don't know, that's a(n inverted) book reference.
Thanks NYT for pointing me to this hilarious section of Facebook. My hobbies apparently include 'tears', and my only food and drink interest is 'bread roll'.
That is somewhat amusing (my hobbies include "bark"). More interestingly my fitness interests included "braid" (image of a braided rope goes here) - because I liked a page related to "braid". Unfortunately, I don't think this fitness-braid includes rewinding time.
Apparently the only thing I'm interested in is "Anarchism." Feeling pretty cool right now tbh. Just need to get Nihilism in there and I can paint my bedroom black.
EDIT: they also know I'm a page admin who uses firefox, such insight. Are there higher-order inferences which we aren't privy to here? What are they doing with all that supposed AI? Stochastically optimizing their javascript pipeline?
Apparently "Democracy" is one of the ad groups I'm targeted for, along with both "Republican Party (United States)" and "Democratic Party (United States)".
Weirdly "In-N-Out Burger" is also listed, despite the fact they don't exist where I live (UK). The suggested ad. preferences are also a little odd - it's almost entirely hip-hop related for no apparent reason (Ghostface Killah/rza/Raekwon/gza/Ol' Dirty Bastard/KRS-One/Computer data storage/Nas/Busta Rhymes/Big L).
I also note that "information [includes] actions you take on and off Facebook". I assume this refers to embedded Like buttons and similar?
* I assume this refers to embedded Like buttons and similar?*
Probably, and most likely regardless of you actually clicking the button or not. I suppose they count a page view as a weak interest, a Like click as a strong interest.
I had written a small blog post about a few weeks back. This tab has been covered many times by other news organisations, especially when Facebook data mining procedures first resulted in a light scare wave.
I'll quote myself:
'...the really scary thing is that it likely knows much more, and these are only a part of what it knows. Although these are said to be used for displaying adverts, they are updated regardless of whether or not you are opted out of the interest-based adverts program.'
That's quite questionable. I work in adtech and when we get an opt out we remove all information about that profile and do not add anything new. We also keep the opt out flag recorded permanently.
Facebook probably has more lawyers than we do, though.
This prompted me to delete all my interests on Facebook, and it made me find a bug: when you don't have any interests, it'll show a spinner that never goes away. [0]
If I were facebook I would hesitate to make this so visible because I wouldn't want my advertising clients to know how unsophisticated and inaccurate these inferences seem to be.
1. My music choices are frozen in time from college 16 years ago (incidentally, daytime Alt Rock music channels in DC similarly haven't progressed past early 2000 nostalgia).
2. My lifestyle and culture is Mac OSX and Android, due to whatever devices I happen to use Facebook on.
3. My food and drink interest is a single choice: "Food".
Seems that a good measure for them not gaining much data about you is to keep logging in an incognito window and not liking much.
All the Interests I see are from where I login (mobile phone models, browsers, OS), one Android wrapper app, apps I linked with FB and 1 Facebook page I liked (football club).
Good news, less data FB has on me, more it makes me happy.
Also interesting: I'm a Christian. I haven't been to a church in 10 or 15 years. I'm an agnostic. I tell people all the time that I'm not religious. But, because of my upbringing, I have a lot of Christian friends. From time-to-time I like their stuff. So Facebook says I'm a Christian. So I must be a Christian?
Facebook knows I have teenagers in the house, and that I have adult children.
The vast majority of this stuff, however, is about things I own: an iPad, my phone, the browser I use, the fact that I'm an early adopter. (How in the world could FB figure out I'm an early adopter?)
And of course, all of this will only get better over time. This is the extreme early stages of machine-based human classification.
It's a very strange experience having all of your posts, likes, and comments being judged by a machine, then told who you really are. Seductively frightening.
From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely religious thing.
Books use allusions to the Bible, even if their authors and readers aren't very religious. People pay lip service to the idea of God (singular, capitalised, and having a particular brand of deity in mind), even if they haven't prayed in decades.
> How in the world could FB figure out I'm an early adopter?
Maybe if you accessed Facebook from a recently released device?
Facebook decided that Mac OSX is part of my 'lifestyle', merely because of the fact that I access them through only through a Mac now despite being a PC owner for decades before that.
"From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely religious thing."
Excellent point. So much of the public dialogue involves similes and metaphors with references to an entire milieu of common myths and values.
I was watching a history show once about religion in the U.S. An interesting thing that I never realized was that religious references were huge part of most every presidential speech up until just recently. It wasn't a dogmatic religious reference, rather the speeches used a common Judaeo-Christian backdrop as a canvas to make arguments about whatever the politician wanted. In a way, this common culture provided a lingua franca between folks of widely different belief systems who shared a lot of common stories. Even atheists and agnostics like myself were usually exposed to a ton of this growing up, and they could follow along -- many times making more of a religious argument in rebuttal than was presented in the first place!
Because of this, even though I want the government to have nothing to do with religion, I feel that kids should be educated in whatever the common mythos is at the time in the culture around them. (I feel the same way about the classics) There's just too much nuance they would miss otherwise. So much of sharing and encouraging deep thought is about comparing complex ideas that are best introduced by reference. If you have no context for the reference, you're way behind the game (and likely will never catch up). Many times online if I'm in a discussion, I make a reference to a complex topic, waiting while the other person googles the keywords, and then I read a reply that obviously indicates that while facts have been consumed by the other person, the underlying concept hasn't really been absorbed into their life in order for them to be able to get it out and reflect upon it. They're just parroting Wikipedia blurbs.
Would FB advertisers knowing this make them more able to sell to me? Probably not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more complex way than a pretty girl, an animated dancing bear, and an offer of a free iPod.
> Probably not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more complex way ..
True enough. One way I can imagine this being used is if you have a person from another culture (e.g. Japan), but the algorithm has identified them as Christian, then certain ads made for the Christian motifs will have more of an impact with them rather than simply being flowery allusions.
WAY off. I'm an agnostic atheist, and this lists "Judaism", "Christianism", "Bible", etc. There's also a huge bunch of other stuff I don't remotely care about.
As someone who self-labels as an 'agnostic atheist' I'd say an interest in those topics sounds likely; 'Interest' does not imply that you're a proponent, only what you engage with...
I guess the parent found that "Nationalist" was inconsistent with all the rest. As a side note, when the words "nationalist" and "socialist" were used together in the past, things didn't end up very well.
As someone not from the US, I don't quite understand while people go "democrat vs republican".
Not only can democracy and republicanism coexist, but they frequently do (I live in a democratic republic, for example). Actually, I think a republican democracy is what makes sense the most, and probably amongst the most common forms of government around.
Anybody care to explain why these stances seem opposed to US-citizens?
It's not meant to be read as "democracy the form of government versus republic the form of government". "Democratic" and "Republican" are just brand names in this case; both parties believe in democracy (popular voting) and republicanism (representative government).
When people say "democrat vs republican" it's just shorthand for "The political organization known as the Democratic Party vs. the political organization known as the Republican Party." You can substitute the names of political parties from your own country as a reference.
> As someone not from the US, I don't quite understand while people go "democrat vs republican".
The are US political parties (Democratic Party and Republican Party).
> Not only can democracy and republicanism coexist, but they frequently do
Well, yeah, and the US Democratic Party's original name referenced both -- it was originally the Democratic-Republican Party -- it just got shortened over time...
The US is a democratic republic as well. There is a difference between "democrat" and "Democrat" just as there is a different between "republican" and "Republican." They are political parties, not adjectives.
Apparently I like soccer and te bible... As someone who is agnostic and cares very little about religion and hate watching any sports, they couldn't be more wrong :-)
Only thing they got right is that I'm a frequent traveller (but that's not difficult to see based on my ips :-)).
Well clearly they have some work to do because I'm labeled as very liberal but I'm actually conservative - and I engage with politics on Facebook a decent amount
I do like to read liberal articles though because I find them interesting
My profile lists my UK political preferences as all the three major parties (Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives), as well as an interest in Religion and the Bible (I'm an atheist).
Interesting information here from Facebook - I don't know why Facebook thinks I like coffee - I never drink it nor why it insists I thinks I'm a fascist who likes bucket hats.
Of course it is. But it is not in Facebook's interest to reward me if, instead of playing along, I choose to require that all of the data it obtain about me come at second hand.
My favourite bands appear to be Blaise Matuidi (who is a footballer - I don't even know who he plays for though), Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, and Kool & The Gang. My favourite sports entities are Team and Kool & The Gang. Under food & drink I have been correctly identified as a fan of water.
I'm a pretty active Facebook user too, so it's not like they have a death of data.