This is old news; researchers figured out how to do this years ago:
https://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/mit-students-faceboo...
[Edit: looks like the article mentions this]
Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
21–30 of 98 posts
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#22Not surprising at all. Ads are targeted based on user behavior on the entire web, not just Facebook. Cookies and such follow you every where and are collected by various sites.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#23The "Like" button is tracking users all over the web. Isn't it possible that their algorithms are correlating patterns in his web history for ad placement on FB too?
That's what the article is saying, yes.
It seemed like there was more emphasis on his comment on a Rob Portman gay marriage story.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#24Don't assume everything is pure science and not just mere coincidence. Facebook sometimes gives me military related ads that specifically call out military people -- let's assume the marketer knows enough to put some sort of targeting on their ads, then why would I be getting those ads? There are too many variables at play to know. Also, I've seen some bugs where people get ads specific to one location even though their IP address and their stated location on their profile is something completely different. We could chalk this up to coincidence or maybe there was enough data on his profile to assume Matt is gay. At the same time, I don't think it's creepy because the advertisers don't see the names/identities of the people they target on Facebook, so the ads are still private until the user actually signs up for a product or service.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#25Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#26Can they predict how long before I finally am off the Facebook platform?
Almost certainly. I wonder what their churn management interventions are.
I don't know all their transactional email strategies, but I've noticed one is those "Do you know [name] or [name]" emails that try to coax you back onto Facebook by asking you if you know certain people and want to friend them.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they stopped it. Just adjusted it so the offers we're alongside random stuff (eg discounts on lawn mowers). That way people wouldn't freak out (presumably because they didn't know how much the company really knew about them) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h... Edit: Worth posting the whole quote (just found it). “With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women…
Offering alcohol to someone you know is pregnant, ugh.
You do know that the medical profession has figured out a small amount of alcohol (a drink or so) after the first trimester isn't a problem, right?
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#28I remember a while back that Target had to back of a similar approach when it began sending out coupons to women that they suspected (w/ apparently a high degree of accuracy) were pregnant. The main anecdote was about a father who found out his daughter was pregnant because they started to receive the coupons. Target eventually backed off this approach (at least for newly pregnant women) because many of their custome…
Tesco was the first company to really do this right - there's a book called Scoring Points[1] that outlines this in details. By using the detailed profiles of customers, they learned that giving discounts on products customers cared about was much more valuable than just giving discounts based on vendor preference. A fan of Coca-Cola will come in to buy a Coke, but won't buy Pepsi, no matter if it's on sale or not.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Scoring-Points-Winning-Customer-Loyalt...
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#29You should be running Ghostery and NoScript/ScriptSafe with JS turned off be default. It's your Internet condom from viruses and advertisers. Like a condom, not 100% effective but you shouldn't concern yourself with edge cases. People can still track you many other ways, but the point is right now they DON'T, so this will keep you pretty safe from this for now. I have any and all domains owned by Facebook and any other social networks I don't use blocked at the router.
Obviously, in reading the article, the primary problem here is that he's a Facebook user, so no amount of protection would help. You can't really use Facebook safely.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#30Can you imagine what's going to happen the first time we have presidential candidates that have clickstreams stored from back when they were twelve?
That's going to be some powerful lobbying mojo - certainly more powerful than anyone's privacy policy.