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Comment by eeeeeeeeeeeee | Hacker News Reader

I've had discussions with people about things I've never searched for or purchased -- discussions around specific companies, and then the same day I start receiving advertisements for those companies, only on Facebook (don't even get Google ones). I have a hard time believing they are re-assembling this from purchase history or any other metadata they have that is not real time. I'm still looking for a simple explanation for this!

Facebook is not a trustworthy company, so I have a hard time believing them about this. But it's why I don't install ANY Facebook applications on my phone anymore and that includes Messenger and Instagram, or any other company they purchase.

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The simple explanation and (maybe scary) truth is that we're a lot more predictable than we think.

Remember when Target got into hot water for outing a pregnant teenager based on an assortment of items she bought [1]? That was based on items like scent-free soap, cotton balls, and vitamin supplements.

That was 6 years ago and (no offense to Target) done by a company that isn't nearly as adept at doing that kind of targeted advertising or inference.

For example, Facebook might know (hypothetically) that you're a young adult in the tech field who lives in Brooklyn and spends a lot of time looking at photography or you're friends with a lot of amateur photographers. So they show you ads for high-end cameras from the most popular vendors, knowing that you're likely to develop an interest in photography if you haven't already.

That's just an extremely simple example, you can imagine that there are far more subtle indicators about someone's interests or likely interests (like the cotton balls for pregnancy).

The timing is almost certainly a coincidence. It's far more likely they show you those ads all the time and you're just noticing them when the coincidence occurs because you're on high alert now for things like this.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

I actually don't think the timing is a coincidence... OP says:

> I've had discussions with people about things I've never searched for or purchased

That doesn't mean his network hasn't been searching for or purchasing those things or leaving behind other breadcrumbs... which is probably enough for Facebook to guess you're a decent candidate for the ads.

also a very good point!

I just wouldn't be shocked if it was a coincidence as well, or something else driving it.

For example, the company mentioned in the OP could be something mentioned in the news recently or in a hot market position right now.

In which case, it's not bizarre that you might see ads for them on FB as well.

It was weird because we were having a discussion about problems in the office, construction related noise, and if we could find a different place to work temporarily. In that group discussion, specific companies that provide co-working services were proposed. I never searched for anything related to this around this time (but it's possible someone in that group did!), I remember that very clearly and why the experience was so creepy. And then that same day I start seeing advertisements for many of the co-working spaces in the area that came up in that discussion. Sure, it could be a coincidence, but it's not the first time I've had that happen with a similar context.

I think the example another person gave is almost just as creepy -- your friends influencing your own advertisements. That means that what your friends are searching for, private (embarrassing) things, could potentially leak over to you.

I'm pretty aware of the fact that if I go looking for socks, I'm going to start getting sock advertisements on almost every page I go with advertisements, on both Google and Facebook. I don't find that creepy, just dumb and ineffective because it usually starts well past the time I already bought the socks.

Off the top of my head, it could easily be the case that Facebook is:

1) Aware of construction happening close to your place of employment (in any number of ways that doesn't require any super advanced knowledge)

2) Knows that people usually start to get fed up with construction noises after X days

3) Started showing you popular co-working spaces as a result

Or, as you noted, your co-workers started searching for co-working spaces and Facebook picks up on that and assumes something is happening in your office such that other people might also be interested in co-working spaces. Creepy, sure. But doesn't require clandestine recording and parsing conversations.

Or, even simpler than that: I see WeWork advertisements all the time despite never discussing them. It's not really that insane to think that places like WeWork might just be targeting your demographic and that's why you saw the advertisement.

Anyway point being, none of these explanations require Facebook to record you.

Target's surprisingly sophisticated. They had a booth at NIPS this year, which I wasn't expecting.

Yeah, I didn't mean that as a dig at target. More so I meant that Facebook is probably just leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else.

That being said, that's totally based on just a hunch and I have no real data to back up that assertion so I could easily be wrong.

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