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Facebook Privacy Politics

Facebook Knows Your Political Preferences (businessinsider.com) 183

Posted by msmash 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.
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Facebook Knows Your Political Preferences More

Facebook Knows Your Political Preferences

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  • NO FUCKING SHIT (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Probably because you keep posting and sharing political garbage all day long

    • well, what happens when you "like" people on all sides of the isle to keep tabs on what is going on? how does FB know which way you lean??

      its a pretty rough way to decide how people think

  • Meh (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    No they don't. They don't even recognise the spaghetti monster as a political party :(.

  • I wonder how much Facebook knows... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zombie Ryushu ( 803103 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @04:05PM (#52757865)

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

    • story. I very much want to know this too. I don't have a Facebook account but all family and whatnot do. I try to get my g/f to not post pictures and things of me but she does it anyway. I would love to see the profile they have of me (and what recourse there is for its removal). I have no doubt that there is one.

      • I try to get my g/f to not post pictures and things of me but she does it anyway.

        Not respecting your request for privacy is a ditch reason.
        Seriously, I cannot see how any relationship can last without trust and respecting each other's wishes. Even when not deemed important. Especially when not deemed important.

    • Re:I wonder how much Facebook knows... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @04:48PM (#52758163)

      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.

      • This exactly. Facebook works by selling ads, nothing else. No eyes, no care.

        You could be like me and have an account, but only use it once a year to simply check to see that no one has stolen your identity, and each time you "log off" you actually deactivate the account.

        Facebook is a soap-box for Vanity Smurf.

      • I've never actually found any Facebook posts about me from other people and my page has never had anything posted to it. Probably a couple I don't know about but not that much. There are on the other hand a dozen other people on Facebook with the same name as me. Wonder if Facebook knows the difference between me and them.

  • Good luck (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nwaack ( 3482871 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @04:08PM (#52757881)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sounds pretty easy to categorize. You're a libertarian.

    • you're fiscally conservative and you support republicans? i think you're confused

      • The Republicans of the 80s and even 90s are nothing like the party of today. Somewhere along the lines it was hijacked by religious nutjobs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

          The Republicans of the 80s and even 90s are nothing like the party of today. Somewhere along the lines it was hijacked by religious nutjobs.

          True, but even the Republicans of the 80s (Reagan #1) were not fiscal conservatives, no matter what their lips were spouting. The closest we got to a balanced budget since 1980 was under Clinton's terms, whether by luck or happenstance, who knows.

        • Politicians are always the same. All they do is appeal to whatever they see as the current mentality that will get them (re)elected.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Jeremi ( 14640 )

            Politicians are always the same. All they do is appeal to whatever they see as the current mentality that will get them (re)elected.

            There's a name for politicians that don't do that -- they are called "non-politicians". You don't get to govern if you can't get into (or stay in) office.

            There's a clear Darwinian-style process at work there.

            • I see the political scene as a small group of families that send their kids to special schools. When it comes time to get elected, all bets are off. Once the election is over, and the winners take their places, it's business as usual, and power stays right where it was before.

              So if there's a Dawinian-style process, it's that the politicians evolve into more advanced politicians, and everyone else evolves in a real way. ;)

        • The Republicans of the 80s and even 90s are nothing like the party of today. Somewhere along the lines it was hijacked by religious nutjobs.

          "Somewhere along the line"? That was Bush. George Pervert Fucker Bush. They were mobilized to elect Bush. You can't mobilize them to stamp out homelessness or feed all the starving children in the country, but you can get them all marching in step to elect a shitheel. This was not the first time the Religious Reich was motivated to vote, but it was the point at which they really became dangerous politically.

      • Where the hell did he say he "supports Republicans"? Do you automatically assume that people who "hate Obama" are Republicans?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If FB is smart, they're categorizing into liberal/conservative x fiscal/social quadrants, rather than just political parties:

      FC + SL = Libertarian
      FC + SC = Republican
      FL + SL = Democrat
      FL + SC = ? (Catholic?)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bondsbw ( 888959 )

      Then vote for Gary Johnson.

      Even if you aren't fiscally conservative or socially inclusive, vote for Gary Johnson. Trump and Hillary are terrible candidates and a vote for Johnson can help him get in the debates and bring sanity to this circus. (I'm not against Stein, but I'd prefer at least one third-party candidate to gain enough strength to get a few electoral votes.)

    • The Bush administration had black people and women in top positions, so "has openly gay friends" isn't that remarkable. Anti-racist, pro LGBTQt (in a limited fashion at least), pro women etc. is a default position, even for right-wing. Hatred is towards the poor and terrorists and "rogue states".
      You can kill as much as you want and claim moral high grounds because you're doing it for "human rights", or wage wars to save lives (oh, the sick irony). Well, it was that way with Bush and Obama, and will be with

    • 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!

      It is possible to predict political preferences beyond looking at what you say about some of the defining issues. Your biology has been shown to be linked to your affiliations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Also this study http://www.smithsonianmag.com/... [smithsonianmag.com]

      And then there is what you eat. http://www.livescience.com/143... [livescience.com]

      Or how smart you are. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci... [dailymail.co.uk]

      Having said that, in the end, they are probably just counting how many Trump photos have been posted by the account.

    • If you add to that "hates gun control, but enjoy shooting your friends in the face", you'd be Dick Cheney [wikipedia.org] (his daughter is gay, he hates Obama, and he hates poor people -- oops I meant "fiscally conservative".)

  • Considering that probably 50% of the stuff I post on my timeline is politicians behaving badly (either party) or stupidly (lately, heavily Republican, but let's be fair, most of that is Trump), and another fair chunk of stuff I post is pro-LGBTQ, I would honestly be more surprised if Facebook couldn't figure out I was liberal.

    I mean, we're not exactly talking a tough determination in my case.

    • You sound like a democrite rather than a liberal. Hitlary's gang is about as liberal as repugnicants, both pro- and anti-Drumpf, are conserving anything.

      She's also actually more racist than Trump, and that's quite an accomplishment. And far more a bigot -- on the other hand, Trump is far, far more an idiot.

  • Correction (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HaaPoo ( 696098 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @04:10PM (#52757897)
    Facebook THINKS it Knows Your Political Preferences , i can promise you it is getting it wrong for my preference.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Congratulations, you're a statistical outlier!

      Here's a star for you, you special snowflake! *

    • Facebook THINKS it Knows Your Political Preferences

      Facebook don't really care if they know, they care if they can make a plausible sounding proposition to their customers, when they sell information about users. Statistics is such a versatile tool for wringing just about anything out of a dataset.

    • It doesn't matter. I'm not sure why this is news, because Facebook has sold a service for quite a few years based on this. They know which constituency each of their users live in (even if you don't provide a real address, the IP that you connect from most frequently and the location of your phone if you install their app give them a good idea). They have a good hit rate for identifying the undecided voters and, importantly, what issues they consider important. They will sell parties the ability to run

  • I care... why? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's not a secret. I don't run around with Trump/Pence bumper stickers on my car, but I'm happy to discuss politics and how to make America great again with anyone that wants to have a civil discussion about it. If it's important to you that your political bent be a closely guarded secret, perhaps running around liking everything on FB isn't something you should be doing to start with.
    • If you weren't an AC and I had mod points I'd mod this up. It's perfectly true. If you care what people can figure out about you, don't post it to Facebook and don't use Facebook to "like" that stuff. Why is it a big surprise that Facebook has a good chance of pinning down your politics (or anything else) when you post about your politics (or something else) to Facebook?

  • Of course (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 31415926535897 ( 702314 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @04:14PM (#52757919) Journal

    These days, your political preference is easier to tell than your gender. That's not even factoring into account that they seem to categorize politics into three buckets and gender into over 70.

  • no they don't! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sittingnut ( 88521 ) <sittingnut@gmBOHRail.com minus physicist> on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @04:17PM (#52757945) Homepage

    1/
    since i have not used or logged in to my facebook account,(which is in my real but very common name that many others share) after initial signing up, and since i have variety of tracking blockers which do block facebook trackers in other websites, they have no data.
    only people trapped in facebook's walled garden can think it is all that powerful.

    more difficult to avoid the reach of that other ad pusher google.

    2/
    they are way too confident in their algorithms that categorize users. i have seen enough wrong headed google ads/recommendations/etc to know that they have a wrong idea about my preferences on many things.

  • As you can see in the comments, Facebook will get right most of the political preferences, but not from the slashdot users. They're too special, unique snowflakes!

  • It's not like they try and hide that they're doing this (at least for me): if I don't use incognito mode, then go on any site even a little political or controversial that has facebook's trackers, I get flooded with suggestions related to whatever leanings that site has.

  • Duh (Score:2)

    by slapout ( 93640 )

    And they know who your friends are, and what times you'll online and what games you play the most. They even know what you look like!

  • Can I see? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @04:28PM (#52758009)
    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.

    • 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?

      They could also look at your friends and their affiliations, your likes, the articles you read, how other people respond to the things you post, etc, etc.

      They might have you completely wrong, but without knowing their specific approach or how much data they're using it's hard to say which people they will get wrong (or right).

      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'm not sure proof by incompetently written questionnaire holds.

      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.

      The labels don't have to be perfect to help FB. Even if you've correctly categorized only 50% of people into one of thre

    • I seriously have never seen an astroturf campaign so far gone for a candidate as for Hillary. It actually doesn't matter what your political preferences are, just that they shove as much pro-Hillary shit into your feed. They honestly believe they can influence people's preferences by bashing or censoring all of the other candidates, and I do actually mean Gary Johnson and Jill Stein here more than the obvious bashing of Trump since Johnson and Stein are a million times more honest than the two front-runne

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        All the pro-hillary stuff in my feed gets there because a specific person shares it. He's toned it down. I wasn't the only person to tell him to be more selective, or I'd mute him.

    • George Takei is a gay rights activist. So would a conservative who likes ice cream (ben and jerrys) and George Takei be labeled liberal?

      You can be conservative in some ways and not in others, although I'd argue that if you're in favor of people being able to be homosexual if they want, you're not really that conservative.

      Or is someone who is far-left who attacks Hillary going to be labeled conservative for being anti-Democrat?

      It happens to me all the time, and humans are doing it. If Fb does it, they'll be on their way to passing the Turing test.

      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 test was to determine whether you were smart enough to tell people what they want to hear, and you failed it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        The test was to determine whether you were smart enough to tell people what they want to hear, and you failed it.

        If that were true, they wouldn't have had all the questions to determine if you were lying. No, they were using a dumb questionnaire to form a personality profile.

        • If that were true, they wouldn't have had all the questions to determine if you were lying. No, they were using a dumb questionnaire to form a personality profile.

          Your failure is one of imagination. You can test for multiple things at once.

  • Since I'm not a fool who still uses Failbook, Failbook knows NOTHING about me whatsoever. Why are you still using Facebook? Or are you so into BDSM that you want Facebook to be your Master? You all read the same news stories about Facebook that everyone else does; don't you think it's wise to at least start formulating your exit strategy from Facebook? Get smart and plan on leaving it today. You'll be glad you did afterwards.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      Since I'm not a fool who still uses Failbook, Failbook knows NOTHING about me whatsoever.

      You're a fool.
      There's extensive datacollection from Facebook on other web sites, tied to cookies, browser fingerprinting and various other means.
      Even here on Slashdot.
      Combine that with friends and acquaintances that might post about you, or pictures that contain you.

      • > You're a fool. There's extensive datacollection from Facebook on other web sites, tied
        > to cookies, browser fingerprinting and various other means. Even here on Slashdot.

        IP ranges to block...

        31.13.24.0 - 31.13.31.255
        31.13.24.0/21
        IE-FACEBOOK-20110418
        Facebook Ireland Ltd
        IE

        31.13.64.0 - 31.13.127.255
        31.13.64.0/18
        AMS2
        Facebook
        NL

        66.220.144.0 - 66.220.159.255
        66.220.144.0/20
        Facebook, Inc.
        THEFA-3

        69.63.176.0 - 69.63.191.255
        69.63.176.0/20
        Facebook, Inc.
        THEFA-3

        69.171.224.0 - 69.171.255.255
        69.171.224.0/19
        Facebook,

      • The trick is not to avoid data collection. That's impossible. The trick is to poison the data. Insert data that is incorrect and outright forged. When you can't tell real from fake data anymore, you essentially have no data at all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by arth1 ( 260657 )

          Pretty much, yes.
          You can take steps to reduce data collection, but thinking you can stop it is naive. You can poison the well, and make it difficult for the collectors to find meaningful correlations, but even that can give them data.
          That there's no PI traffic from a specific IP, or there appears to be 700 different people at one residential address might raise a flag with those who peer over the collectors' shoulders.

          And for advertisers, if all the cookies are blocked with ad blockers, inserting in-page s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        There's extensive datacollection from Facebook on other web sites, tied to cookies, browser fingerprinting and various other means.

        That largely depends on whether you allow third-party cookies to be set. Anybody who cares about privacy in the least would have third-party cookies disabled. Let Farcebook try to snoop on my /. activity...it's not gonna work.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by arth1 ( 260657 )

          That largely depends on whether you allow third-party cookies to be set. Anybody who cares about privacy in the least would have third-party cookies disabled. Let Farcebook try to snoop on my /. activity...it's not gonna work.

          There are still images and scripts embedded, where your web browser sends headers to the remote site. Unless you scrub the headers and IP by going through a proxy server, you're still providing them information.

          http://panopticlick.eff.org/tr... [eff.org]

  • People can generally guess a lot about you, based on things you say and do. No fancypants machine learning necessary.

    • They might assume that I'm a boring person, based on my few posts. I doubt they could guess my political leanings.

  • So, liberals like to pay premium prices for mediocre frozen desserts?

    • Liberals CAN pay that premium, that's the whole joke about it. It's easy to call for less regulation, less social security and less protection of the poor if you're well off.

  • are they going to send their geeks to your house to take away your precious guns because you like the redstatewatcher.com page? or any other right wing rag on the internet?

  • There is a "Political Views" field available for you to set in your profile. Nothing sinister going on if you specify "Very Liberal" and Facebook therefore knows you're probably pretty liberal.

  • I have a FB account, but I rarely use it. I certainly don't talk politics on it, nor do I click on the dumb crap, political or otherwise, that pops up on it.

    • Maybe not, but the people you friended might. Remember, we're in the age of guilt by association, you're guilty of what your "friends" commit.

  • >"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. "

    First, it doesn't know more than I think... but, then, I am not a user.

    In any case, the political spectrum is not a single scale of left and right. Never has been. That is a gross over-simplification of how things actually are. "Conservative" and "Liberal" mean absolutely nothing out of context. You can be conservative eco

  • How else would they figure out how efficiently and effectively suppress conservative content while retaining SOCJUS adherents?

  • 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.

    Perhaps you all should just assume we all like ice cream.

    • No, that can't be. A cigar can't just be a cigar, you also must hate the environment and everyone around you. And liking a TV show is not just you wanting to watch something to get a cheap laugh from but it is making a political statement now.

      Nobody does anything just for the sake of just doing it anymore, everyone has some hidden agenda. And if you can't see that, you're just an aspie who can't understand humans.

  • 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.

    "Assume" is not the same as "know".

  • They got me dead wrong on a lot of things on the Ad preferences page.

    Google on the other hand, is much better at this and I find using their stuff to be much less intrusive somehow.

    https://www.google.com/setting... [google.com]

  • Even *I* don't know my own political preference.

  • Regardless of how many news stories, ads, or posts I tell it to hide, FB remains clueless about my tastes. It will suggest I join groups I just left, buy products I just bought, recommend befriending people I never heard of.

  • There is distance between people's stated and actual preferences. Data on stated preferences can be gathered via surveys (with the usual distortions), but revealed preferences can be trickier to identify, to do so accurately and with any granularity is a real problem.

    Forget advertisers, this is a boon for academic political science and sociology research. Facebook has such massive data sets that there could be dozens or hundreds of unknown correlates of political preference, behavior, and decision maki

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Moderate is NOT a word to use to describe my political views. Nor is conservative. Nor is liberal...

    I'm most closely a "Communist Libertarian"....and am an odd hodgepodge. I passionately supported Bernie Sanders, but vehemently oppose Hillary Clinton. I'm pro-gun, and would rather see a national healthcare program than this horrendous mess. I think Trump's tax plan is much better than HRC. I support Black Lives Matter. I'm just a mess politically.

    Guess... I'm just a bloody American!

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