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Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

nytimes.com

41–50 of 94 posts

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

#41
Apparently the only thing I'm interested in is "Anarchism." Feeling pretty cool right now tbh. Just need to get Nihilism in there and I can paint my bedroom black.

EDIT: they also know I'm a page admin who uses firefox, such insight. Are there higher-order inferences which we aren't privy to here? What are they doing with all that supposed AI? Stochastically optimizing their javascript pipeline?

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

#43

Interesting. I'm a moderate. Who knew? Also interesting: I'm a Christian. I haven't been to a church in 10 or 15 years. I'm an agnostic. I tell people all the time that I'm not religious. But, because of my upbringing, I have a lot of Christian friends. From time-to-time I like their stuff. So Facebook says I'm a Christian. So I must be a Christian? Facebook knows I have teenagers in the house, and that I have adult…

From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely religious thing. Books use allusions to the Bible, even if their authors and readers aren't very religious. People pay lip service to the idea of God (singular, capitalised, and having a particular brand of deity in mind), even if they haven't prayed in decades. > How in the world could FB figure out I'm an early adopter? Maybe if you accessed Fa…

"From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely religious thing."

Excellent point. So much of the public dialogue involves similes and metaphors with references to an entire milieu of common myths and values.

I was watching a history show once about religion in the U.S. An interesting thing that I never realized was that religious references were huge part of most every presidential speech up until just recently. It wasn't a dogmatic religious reference, rather the speeches used a common Judaeo-Christian backdrop as a canvas to make arguments about whatever the politician wanted. In a way, this common culture provided a lingua franca between folks of widely different belief systems who shared a lot of common stories. Even atheists and agnostics like myself were usually exposed to a ton of this growing up, and they could follow along -- many times making more of a religious argument in rebuttal than was presented in the first place!

Because of this, even though I want the government to have nothing to do with religion, I feel that kids should be educated in whatever the common mythos is at the time in the culture around them. (I feel the same way about the classics) There's just too much nuance they would miss otherwise. So much of sharing and encouraging deep thought is about comparing complex ideas that are best introduced by reference. If you have no context for the reference, you're way behind the game (and likely will never catch up). Many times online if I'm in a discussion, I make a reference to a complex topic, waiting while the other person googles the keywords, and then I read a reply that obviously indicates that while facts have been consumed by the other person, the underlying concept hasn't really been absorbed into their life in order for them to be able to get it out and reflect upon it. They're just parroting Wikipedia blurbs.

Would FB advertisers knowing this make them more able to sell to me? Probably not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more complex way than a pretty girl, an animated dancing bear, and an offer of a free iPod.

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

#45
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.

Is there a way to get that info in the mobile app?

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

#46
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.

Is there a way to get that info in the mobile app?

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

#47

Apparently the only thing I'm interested in is "Anarchism." Feeling pretty cool right now tbh. Just need to get Nihilism in there and I can paint my bedroom black. EDIT: they also know I'm a page admin who uses firefox, such insight. Are there higher-order inferences which we aren't privy to here? What are they doing with all that supposed AI? Stochastically optimizing their javascript pipeline?

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

#48

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'.

Apparently one of my hobbies is "Abstraction." I guess that is true...

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

#50
post #9

Apparently "Democracy" is one of the ad groups I'm targeted for, along with both "Republican Party (United States)" and "Democratic Party (United States)". Weirdly "In-N-Out Burger" is also listed, despite the fact they don't exist where I live (UK). The suggested ad. preferences are also a little odd - it's almost entirely hip-hop related for no apparent reason (Ghostface Killah/rza/Raekwon/gza/Ol' Dirty Bastard/KRS…

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