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My Facebook ads are well targeted: I've bought tickets to a book signing for my daughter's favorite author, and awesome map, a couch (!!), and a great pair of underwear off fb ads. I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting.

You could imagine an alternate world where FB has total information about my online activity, and the ads are extremely useful because they know what I want before I do.

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I think it would help dispel the suspicion that the Facebook ad targeting algorithm itself wrote this, if you added a little disclaimer that you work(ed) there.

Fair enough: I did work there, though never on ads, and it's been a few years.

To be clear, I realize the privacy tradeoffs are probably unacceptable and I'm not seriously proposing the FB panopticon. But I do think it's an interesting thought experiment to consider how good this could be without constraints.

>they know what I want before I do.

Or did they tell you what to want?

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