Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 94 posts

Re: Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

#71

Post by goodcanadian »

bjackman wrote: post #30

Main takeaway from this: Facebook know much less about me than I thought. Maybe the whole online advertising industry is an emperor's-new-clothes situation. My favourite bands appear to be Blaise Matuidi (who is a footballer - I don't even know who he plays for though), Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, and Kool & The Gang. My favourite sports entities are Team and Kool & The Gang. Under food & drink…

I am one of those weirdos who is not on Facebook, but I have come to a similar conclusion about Google. The ads that I am served are almost funny sometimes.

Re: Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

#73

Post by sixothree »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #3

Thanks NYT for pointing me to this hilarious section of Facebook. My hobbies apparently include 'tears', and my only food and drink interest is 'bread roll'.

I'm fairly certain my friends have tagged me at restaurants and famous bars but my only food interest is panipuri.

Re: Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

#74

Post by nicolas_t »

Apparently I like soccer and te bible... As someone who is agnostic and cares very little about religion and hate watching any sports, they couldn't be more wrong :-)

Only thing they got right is that I'm a frequent traveller (but that's not difficult to see based on my ips :-)).

Re: Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

#75

Post by ravenstine »

bjackman wrote: post #30

Main takeaway from this: Facebook know much less about me than I thought. Maybe the whole online advertising industry is an emperor's-new-clothes situation. My favourite bands appear to be Blaise Matuidi (who is a footballer - I don't even know who he plays for though), Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, and Kool & The Gang. My favourite sports entities are Team and Kool & The Gang. Under food & drink…

I've had the same conclusion for a while. I'm not a social media junkie, but I use Facebook often enough that they should know a lot about me but their ads and their algorithmic content show that they have a long way to go in getting a computer to actually understand my behavior and interests.

Re: Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

#77

Post by e40 »

bduerst wrote: post #4

TL;DR: for those hitting a paywall: 1) Go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences 2) Open the Lifestyle and culture tab under the Interests section 3) Find the US Politics box and see what Facebook thinks you are in the parentheses Edit: Apparently I am targeted for ads related to bubble wrap.

It got my political leaning correct, but under advertisers: fast-payday-loan. I find that curious.

Re: Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

#78

Post by nswanberg »

bjackman wrote: post #30

Main takeaway from this: Facebook know much less about me than I thought. Maybe the whole online advertising industry is an emperor's-new-clothes situation. My favourite bands appear to be Blaise Matuidi (who is a footballer - I don't even know who he plays for though), Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, and Kool & The Gang. My favourite sports entities are Team and Kool & The Gang. Under food & drink…

If by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" you mean the paranoia about what these companies "know" about individuals, I agree. But since at least Google's revenue last year was $75 billion, it's clearly valuable to have statistically significant information about groups of people.

I think that people who are worried about data that others have on them would be better served by worrying about data brokers first, though: https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-... (though again, I think that the amount these people know and sell to others is less than a small town shopkeeper would know about their patrons 100 years ago).

Post reply on HN