Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
dearth.
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).
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
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.
1) Go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences
2) Open the Lifestyle and culture tab under the Interests section
3) Find the US Politics box and see what Facebook thinks you are in the parentheses
Edit: Apparently I am targeted for ads related to bubble wrap.
(but I get "equivalent" results)
[0] To those (few?) who don't know, that's a(n inverted) book reference.
Isn’t everyone?
The peril of strings.
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?
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?
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.
Heh, how strange. Me too. As well as Filipino politics, some American Football teams and someone called Rupert Neve.
Also my food and drink interests include "Beef".
Founder of Neve Electronics, famous for inventing the modern sound mixing desk. You're in good company there.
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.'
Facebook probably has more lawyers than we do, though.
Guess I'm going flag shopping.
[0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/35731h2se6d1ur2/Screenshot%202016-...
Like the last scene of Inception.
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".
Well played Facebook.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Plus, there's no politic-related entry there.
- Leftist/communist
- Democratic Socialist
- Obama
- Nationalist
- Pirate Party
- Workers international
Also I find that Facebook thinks that Obama fits in that set, ridiculous.
Nationalist as well
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?
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.
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...
Only thing they got right is that I'm a frequent traveller (but that's not difficult to see based on my ips :-)).
I do like to read liberal articles though because I find them interesting
All hail Amun-Ra
A small tip for you...
Which is odd I would pop out a turtles head in fear if I found myself on stage or in front of a camera.