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Comment by mkmk | Hacker News Reader

This actually violates the “personal attributes” rule. In my experience, this rule is enforced quite strictly — although you can still see the same targeting criteria under the “why did I see this ad” feature.

https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/perso...

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This rule reads as “don’t tell the target about our assumptions of them”. Isn’t that kind of the point of Signals post?

I'm assuming the rule is around because FB knows it's targeting isn't 100% accurate and it might ruffle feathers if an ad claims you're something you're not. I don't see that specifically as nefarious.

Especially because FB tells me why I am being shown an ad already.

In the early days of COVID I was curious what the difference between types of viruses. e.g. how herpes and HIV hides in cells compared to viruses like influenza and SARS-CoV-2.

One of those sites clearly had Facebook integration because now Facebook is sure that I'm an HIV-positive gay man, with ads that correspond. It is one thing to get the ads but it would be a bit more overt if there was a text ad declaring that I was an HIV positive gay man.

People take offense at being told that there’s a machine labeling them, and would demand the right to revise or remove the machine-assigned labels. Facebook prevents that outcome by preventing disclosure of targeting characteristics.

See also this Show HN from /new for purging your complete set of labels, and ask why Facebook doesn’t build this into the site UI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045374

(The link is broken, but apparently there's a page you can single-remove specific interests from, if you can find it.)

Wow, that item link points to a literally blank page. The site template is there but there isn't even a title header.

Sadly even the web archive's copy of the page has the empty version :(

Yes it is. Signals ads might still get approved if they took out the 'you' voice. But that dilutes the awareness they are bringing.

They could just turn it into questions ("Are you...?")

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