I don't mean to be snide, but what gives you the right to know what everyone else is seeing?
Tons of posts on HN are about how individuals should own their data, yet you think you should also have access to that of others?
Tons of posts on HN are about how individuals should own their data, yet you think you should also have access to that of others?
advertisement is part of public discourse, in particular political advertisement.
>But that library excludes information about the targeting that determines who sees the ads.
>The researchers behind the NYU Ad Observatory said they wanted to provide journalists, researchers, policy makers, and others with the ability to search political ads by state and contest to see what messages are targeted to specific audiences and how those ads are funded.
The point of the research is to figure out what ads Facebook shows to which users, which is of course particularly important for people who try to do research on how ads on Facebook intersect with politics.
I have someone on my contact list in fb who honestly thinks that QAnon exposes pedophiles. I can't wrap my head around how the heck they've reached that conclusion.
Oh, come on. You are bringing that into this discussion. The topic is not people's private search or browsing history. Political advertisements are very clearly a public issue.
A real breakdown of theory of mind would mean that there is a breakdown in common understanding. Like with an animal, you don't have complete theory of mind with an animal, and it certainly does not with you -- there is an inability to account for the reasoning of a dog.
The way current social media and search engines optimize for engagement and tailor information to each user, people have really different views on the universe right now as is; and this has already had real-world consequences. (eg. corona-response, motivations for or against Brexit, etc. )
It's also not about knowing what a specific user sees. The targeting configurations that advertisers use should be made public, but nobody needs to know which individual users see which individual ads.
So, you should be able to click a "?" link in the corner of any ad and see which demographics or groups the ad is targeting. And likewise, you should be able to look at individual demographics or groups and see which ads are targeting them at any given moment.
This sort of transparency would go a long way towards restoring trust, but I suspect that it would also reveal what a cesspit their ad market is. The advertisers would also probably object, because many would consider their targeting parameters to be a sort of trade secret. And whoever pays the piper calls the tune.
You can do this on Facebook, for maybe four years now. It's not particularly informative, but it exists.
FB/Google/Twitter etc work by measuring some kind of conversion (pixel hit, app install etc). Micro-targeting in terms of voting doesn't have this signal, and as such any of these ads will be difficult to make work on FB.
You can optimise for engagement, but I suspect an ad targeting black voters saying about the 94 crime bill is unlikely to elicit much engagement.
Of course, one could argue that Facebook has a right to communicate with their users confidentially. But it's a bit of a stretch to treat ads as private communication.
The advertiser, The ad, the targeting given.
None of this contains private information and it‘s equivalent to what‘s known about ads in a newspaper.