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Comment by snazz | Hacker News Reader

I was not aware that it’s possible to target Facebook ads that closely. Does anyone know how this company can do this?

There was this guy who got an interview at Reddit using facebook targeting to target Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

http://twicsy-blog.tumblr.com/post/174063770074/how-i-target...

>It turns out the Reddit CEO had a public Facebook profile, so I could go there to see details about him. Where he lived. What he was interested in. I took that info to the Facebook platform to help narrow down the campaign. But I didn’t want everyone to click on it, just one person. So I custom tailored the ad to directly target the one person I wanted to read it.

>“Steve: Reddit needs recommendations”

>The ad reached 197 people. 4 People clicked on it. One of them was the CEO of Reddit. I spent a total of $10.62.

>Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, saw my ad, clicked on it, read (probably skimmed) my article, and liked it well enough to send a note to Reddit HR to contact me about a position.

This is not possible anymore though as the minimum target audience size is now 1000 or so

It's, uh, 20.

It says you have to pick groups of 20 as your target advertising audience, but you can select 19 men and 1 woman and say the as should only be shown to women to effectively target a single individual.

The practice is called "sniping".

Also if you sell 20 people the same targeted advertising package, you now have a group of 20 targets so you don't even need to resort to tricks.

That HAS to be illegal right? I'll be very disappointed if it isn't

I don't know if it's illegal or not but this is the financial building block of almost all modern IT companies. Brainwashing people as a service. Did you miss out on this? Is it really that different when you can do it with $29 on one person than with $290 on 100 persons or $100k on a million?

> Is it really that different when you can do it with $29 on one person than with $290 on 100 persons or $100k on a million?

Yes.

It would take tons of time to protect individuals from deceptive advertising. The bigger the group and the more public the ad the easier it is to protect the public.

Also, for $29 someone could bombard you with content about suicide or other dark topics and just be relentless with negativity.

It's so much different than showing an ad to 100 women ages 30-45 in Chicago.

Is pushing anxiety, inadequacy, incompleteness and consumerism into the minds of 100 women ages 30-45 in Chicago more justifiable than if it were "suicide or other dark topics."

I think we've defined "acceptable" advertising by working backward from what people find profitable to advertise about. We can chip at the edges here and there (not these products, forced demographic boundaries (or lack thereof)) but the overwhelming thrust isn't effected. It's a lie we tell ourselves because the alternative is to admit we're powerless. Powerless to control the content of ads, and powerless to identify and repel the forces ads wants to effect on our psyche.

You are NOT powerless. Mute the TV, close the Facebook or YouTube video. At minimum, turn away. Learn to ignore the ad areas, or use an ad blocker. Resist.

Correct, neither is good, but IMO individual targeting is worse because the potential for accountability is less. It requires every individual to complain.

In group targeting, only a few in the group need to know something is wrong and they can complain and save the group from further inappropriate advertising.

There was a blog post a few years ago where a guy to get back at a prank from his room mate used target facebook ads to hit just him to make him feel crazy[0]. Also facebook has openly hijacked every political system on the planet, made that Fyre festival happen, and have been spewing data at near anonymous developer accounts for a decade. I think maybe this is a good thing that this company is being open about it. If this was illegal then all the "legit" people that have been abusing it would have something to worry about and many of them are very rich. I'm not sure the company using the services offered in the way they are designed is the real villain.

[0] https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...

There's an even easier crazy loophole called a 'postcard' that goes right directly to the person, in physical form even, sending your message direct to them!

There was an article here a couple of years ago about a guy targeting his roommate with Facebook ads using only their demographic targeting.

I was expecting the article to link to that post. For those that haven't read it, here it is: https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...

Within 5 seconds, I went from being disturbed by the headline, to laughing at this. Social media news ellicit this contrast of (evil) possibilities and frustrating injustice.

I don't think it has much to do with Facebook. The way it works (from their website) is that the target has to be sent a link to click on, which opens a page that places a cookie on their browser and immediately forwards them to a generic article. Presumably they'll then be targeted by major ad networks based on this cookie.

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