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Most Facebook Users Don't Know That it Records a List of Their Interests, New Study Finds (theverge.com) 107

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
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.
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Most Facebook Users Don't Know That it Records a List of Their Interests, New Study Finds More

Most Facebook Users Don't Know That it Records a List of Their Interests, New Study Finds

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  • Facebook knows my sexy secrets (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They know I am a man that likes women! I have heard that is incredibly unpopular these days.

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by zidium ( 2550286 )

      Go watch the Gillette ad :((

      • Or just mention "toxic masculinity" anywhere near your phone and watch the Gillette ad come up in your feed 100x a day for the next 60 days.

  • Clean out your FB Ad Preferences (Score:3)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @01:36PM (#57972890)

    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.)

    • Sorry, here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/ads/p... [facebook.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Holi ( 250190 )
        Thanks, I just checked it out, and thankfully Facebook doesn't know shit about me. The things listed in my interest section have nothing to do with my actual interests.

        I guess my campaign of misinformation has been entirely effective.

    • This link should take you to your Ad Preferences

      I'm assuming you somehow messed up the syntax for https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences [facebook.com], I thought a direct link was a good idea so I thought I'd provide it...

      Some sections seemed alright, but under travel it thought I was interested in the "Entire Rios Province", somewhere in Argentina - bizarre.

    • Re:Clean out your FB Ad Preferences (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @02:24PM (#57973144) Journal
      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.

      • Actually, you need to trick it, to flush the cache.

        Edit your Interests, Change them or delete them.

        Edit your Bio data. Change it or delete them.

        Then use the /ads/preferences AFTER A COUPLE OF DAYS

        If you want to fool it, alter them to things that don't help them.

      • The only way to possibly win this game is to not play in the first place

        Just like global thermonuclear warfare.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Teun ( 17872 )
        Indeed.
        Worse is they keep track of people not subscribed but who's names cropped up in the address books a lot of idiots shared with Facebook.

    • And how would this work for non-users? Presumably FB is building profiles on those too, you know. Subscribe to FB just to 'get some say' in how FB processes what it has on you?

      Btw - ridiculous that this is a reasonable question in the first place. Imho CEO's should be taken out into the streets and shot, for collecting data about non-subscribers the way & on the scale FB does it.

    • I don't see anything for me. I disabled the option to target ads based on data from partners and such. The "Your interests" section just wants me to select things I am interested to see ads for (hah!). The "Advertisers" shows a list of auto dealers that are more than 1000 miles from me, and the other two tabs there are empty.

      I have known for a couple decades that at least one person gives out my email address as a spam blocker, in that I get the spam instead of him. So I get regular reminders to bring in

  • Dear f=Facebook.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm interested in kicking little puppies, reminding orphans that they have no parents, and sneaking around sports bars with a TV-B-Gone switching off sets just as a major play is about to complete (everyone needs some danger in their lives)

      Signed,
              I. P. Freelie

    • At which point you will start getting advertisements for Milo and Ben's roadshow of traveling white male conservative homosexual outrage

  • I remember Facebook ad preferences thinking that I was of African-American ancestry even though I wasn't (to my knowledge, anyway).

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      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.

    • It's really incredible that a company who people literally hand all their life details to still can't make a somewhat accurate interests profile for more than 60%. One could probably get 50% to call it somewhat accurate by randomly assigning popular interests horoscope-style.

    • I remember Facebook ad preferences thinking that I was of African-American ancestry even though I wasn't (to my knowledge, anyway).

      Hmm..so, do you listen to and visit a lot of rap sites or something?

      Would be interesting to hear what african behaviors and such you think you might have that had them think of you as one?

  • Well.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They all did sign themelves over to a heartless multi-national corporation who's goal is to make money in all ways possible. Do I feel sorry for them? NO. If they aren't aware at this point of what Facebook is really all about, then they are just hopelessly clueless.

      That's OK. Resume posting those pictures that you ruin with stupid pseudo-anime cat face filters and challenging each other to IRL fights.

  • The more we find out about Facebook... (Score:4)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @01:51PM (#57972962)
    ... the worse Facebook looks.

    • ... the worse Facebook looks.

      The more you find out?

      So you admit you were not among the 49% that understand what ad-supported means?

      • Once upon a time advertising was an entirely separate business from snooping, stalking, and compiling secret dossiers.

        Most people assume Faceboot makes its money by showing advertisements. Which just doesn't match its observed behavior at all. A small but growing set of people now suspect that most of Faceboot's revenue comes from selling mass surveillance data to Uncle Sam and other repressive governments.

  • 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.

  • Baby gonna cry now ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And just what precisely did these sub-morons think was going to happen?

    Clearly the "shallow end of the gene pool" is considerably shallower and quite a bit larger than previously imagined ...

  • i'm aware. and it's wrong. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's downright hilarious that all these tech companies have "all this data" and "all this technology" like "AI" or whatever else. Yet their algorithms are absolute fucking garbage.

  • Attention span (Score:3)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @02:26PM (#57973152) Journal
    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.

  • So? It's not automatically a bad thing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Snazster ( 5236943 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @02:31PM (#57973178)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The problem is opt-in vs. opt-out. All data collection should require explicit opt-in, should preclude sharing with other entities, and should include the right to delete the info already collected.

      Informed consent, and the right to revoke consent.

  • Sign in to Instagram... (Score:3)

    by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @02:45PM (#57973244)

    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.

  • You should tailor it instead (Score:3)

    by Quince alPillan ( 677281 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @03:47PM (#57973564)

    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.

    • 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

      Bravo to you, but I already know what I want.

      I also don't need to be told what I want or that I should want some product or other. In fact, hectoring me to buy something generally causes me not to want whatever it is. But that's just me.

      • Serious question: How do you find out about new products that are relevant to your interests?

        I regularly browse the web with my adblocker turned on. The TV I watch doesn't have advertisements (i.e. binging shows on Netflix) or is completely irrelevant (i.e. my kids' shows that advertise the latest crap toy or game). I will occasionally see something on social media that my friends share, but honestly, they don't have a lot of the same interests that I do.

        The only way that I can really find out about new pro

        • Serious question: How do you find out about new products that are relevant to your interests?

          First of all, I have nearly everything I need and want, so I'm not terrorized by the urge to constantly buy stuff. I don't have the urge to look for things I don't have and then buy them.

          The new things I do find out about? They may show up on Amazon or in a magazine or are mentioned to me by a friend. Sometimes I may hear about them on a radio station. Or maybe the "buzz" around them becomes so great that it's impossible to avoid hearing about it.

          But really, the bottom line is that I'm not looking for new s

  • People who still use Facebook (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I would argue that people who still use Facebook don't know much at all...about anything.

  • The headline is not suggesting otherwise, is it?
  • is going to do ads and needs your profile to do ads.
    Social media is free as you are the product getting sold and used.

  • A simple browser extension called "FB Purity" will make it so you never see another ad on Facebook. So I don't really care that Facebook knows that I like 1930's gypsy jazz and 1970s auteur films, because any ad they target me with is gonna be vaporized long before I see it, so fuck them. And it does a lot more than that to make Facebook more useful, too.

    Seriously, try this extension.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      You don't care that they sell all of your data to everybody else, too? Just because you don't see ads on Facebook, doesn't mean that your data isn't still sold to anybody else who's willing to pay, as well.

      • You don't care that they sell all of your data to everybody else, too?

        I can understand why a lot of people would object to it, but at this point in my life, no, I don't really care very much. Maybe a little bit. I would however be more than happy to pay for a service like Facebook that did not collect my data.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      In other words, you are still feeding the monster they are.

      • In other words, you are still feeding the monster they are.

        I prefer to see it as us coming to an understanding.

        Plus, FPB allows me to destroy and/or salt those lists of "interests". So they're not collecting anything of value from me. I have found a technological solution to a technological problem.

  • Translation (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Thursday January 17, 2019 @12:28AM (#57975628) Journal

    "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 "

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