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Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

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Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#61
post #2

Reminds me of a court case [0] proactively challenging Facebook, due to a time the company gave someone a lifetime ban [1] for making this kind of consumer-tool. [0] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/02/meta_facebook_tool/ [1] https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-every...

A lifetime ban from Facebook would be a blessing for me :)

LOL a lifetime ban from Facebook?! Whatever will we do with all that better mental health and free time from not doomscrolling all day! Don’t threaten me with a good time!

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#62
Much more entertaining: Get the list of advertisers. Find the ones who aren't allowed to share your data with Facebook, e.g. due to lack of consent or because they're bound by professional secrecy (e.g. banks or health related things). Report to your local DPA.

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#63

Awesome script! I'm watching it run now :) Question, could someone explain the exact impact this would have for Facebook & a person's experience with ads? I kinda have a few guesses, but am curious if anyone can weigh in with more info, how this is crippling and overall what the effect should be. Thanks!

Those third parties upload the data they have about you to Facebook (clicks, cookies, times, geo, non-psychology factors)

Facebook then refines what the third-parties have with what Facebook has (enriches this coarse data with rich psychographic data that only Facebook has)

This cuts off that relationship

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#64
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do And It's a -HUGE- surface area to cover When IoT and IoB comes online, it will be near impossible to stop this kind of stuff

What's IoB?

Internet of Bodies

Basically, the end of the world

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#65

What is the motivation to prefer untargeted ads over targeted ones?

My bank telling Facebook that I'm their customer is a breach of privacy. If you care about ethics not law, it's none of Facebook's business to know who I bank with. If you don't care about ethics, only law as written, it's a breach of the law for the bank to share this information with Facebook.

And at least one European Neo-bank no longer does this. I don't think I was the only/first one to report them, and unfortunately I don't think they were fined for doing it, but I sure did report them.

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#66
post #3

Cool script. My hack is to live in a country where the local language is not my own, and not the one I have set in my Facebook settings. As a result, Facebook rarely has advertisements that can target me, because my language has been filtered out by the advertisers. When one does appear, it’s nearly always in the local language, so I’m kind of deaf to it and I’m not going to actively respond to anyway. Luckily they h…

Same situation for me. Basically the only ads I ever see in my native language are for American expat tax services (I’m not American, have never visited the continent and have never expressed interest in doing so).

Sometimes I wonder just how good this adtech really all is when the best they can do is figure out I speak English (browser language) and live not in an English speaking country (IP address) and just assume therefore I am American.

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#67

Much more entertaining: Get the list of advertisers. Find the ones who aren't allowed to share your data with Facebook, e.g. due to lack of consent or because they're bound by professional secrecy (e.g. banks or health related things). Report to your local DPA.

What does DPA stand for? Guessing it's not Drug Policy Alliance, the first hit on Google.

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#68
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are using the term "gangstalk", which refers to a specific symptom of mental illness, ironically?

& feeling paranoia is a garantee of having mental disease?

more or less

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lifetime ban from Facebook would be a blessing for me :)

LOL a lifetime ban from Facebook?! Whatever will we do with all that better mental health and free time from not doomscrolling all day! Don’t threaten me with a good time!

As someone who has read tons of books, articles, etc, on the addictive qualities of Facebook and the personal harm it can do - and personally observed the effects it was having on me - I STILL only deleted the Facebook app from my phone a few weeks ago.

The dissonance between what we know is good for us and our actual behaviour in the face of addiction is truly incredible.

Re: Show HN: Simple script to cripple personalized targeting from Facebook

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are using the term "gangstalk", which refers to a specific symptom of mental illness, ironically?

No, I mean the action of gangstalking If a bunch of people analyze your psychology and then coordinate to use what they find to scare you, that's gangstalking When an AI does it.... it's expected advertising behavior? I don't like that double standard. Gangstalking is gangstalking.

"A study from Australia and the United Kingdom by Lorraine Sheridan and David James[13] compared 128 self-defined victims of 'gang stalking' with a randomly selected group of 128 self-declared victims of stalking by an individual. All 128 'victims' of gang stalking were judged to be delusional, compared with only 5 victims of individual stalking."
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