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Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
41–50 of 98 posts
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% accuracy is never going to be possible. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to see a price structure for targeted advertisements based on confidence intervals.
Of course. So when someone posts an article with anecdotal evidence towards the way Facebook uses data, we can assume it might be true in thousands of other cases or tens of millions of cases. It's hard to know which though. A different pricing structure would be interesting to see sometime in the future.
I made a point earlier that the advertiser chooses the target audience and I don't believe FB does what this article claims. I've seen retargeting creep into FB lately but again someone is making assertions rather than an algorithm IMO. Some 3rd party ad networks let you really drill down.
I think FB can do what this article claims but is not actually doing it.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#43This is a bit creepy but it is the kind of thing that could be guessed from facebook activity so it is kind of to be expected. Lately I've been seeing ads that correlate with things that happen to me completely outside Facebook. About things on sites I only access through google for example. I find this more disturbing. I checked the "Block third-party cookies and site data" in Chrome so they shouldn't be able to tra…
Blocking third-party cookies does practically nothing to prevent such tracking. Web-bugs and supercookies, just for starters, are immune to that. Install Ghostery to get all the low-hanging fruit - you'll probably want to tweak-up the settings from the default. There are still sophisticated trackers out there beyond what Ghostery can stop. For firefox the Request Policy add-on will give you very good control over tha…
Online tracking I can understand, but I consider myself to be pretty on top of these types of issues and I was surprised to find out about that Facebook might be tracking offline behavior too. Even though it seems obvious in hindsight - credit card and loyalty card companies know everything you buy, and Facebook knows your personal info, so just connect the two - I don't think it's the type of thing that occurs to most people.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#44This is a bit creepy but it is the kind of thing that could be guessed from facebook activity so it is kind of to be expected. Lately I've been seeing ads that correlate with things that happen to me completely outside Facebook. About things on sites I only access through google for example. I find this more disturbing. I checked the "Block third-party cookies and site data" in Chrome so they shouldn't be able to tra…
> Lately I've been seeing ads that correlate with things that happen to me completely outside Facebook. About things on sites I only access through google for example. I find this more disturbing. Though you say completely outside Facebook, at least it is still just taking signals from other parts of the Internet. Imagine now what Google Now or Glass will be able add! Seriously though, I think Perfect Audience (YC S1…
Facebook has friended Datalogix which tracks grocery purchases via loyalty cards. I would not be surprised if that's how facebook found out he bought the sauce.
http://www.dailywireless.org/2012/09/24/facebook-data-linked...
They have a bunch of disclaimers about how they don't share personally identifiable purchasing information but the entire industry has basically redefined what is "personally identifiable" to something much less inconvenient for them.
https://www.privacyassociation.org/resource_center/the_chang...
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Bullshit.
You can say that as much as you would like... then go do a Google search. No one is saying to get drunk with a baby, but a glass (max) is fine.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course. So when someone posts an article with anecdotal evidence towards the way Facebook uses data, we can assume it might be true in thousands of other cases or tens of millions of cases. It's hard to know which though. A different pricing structure would be interesting to see sometime in the future.
I made a point earlier that the advertiser chooses the target audience and I don't believe FB does what this article claims. I've seen retargeting creep into FB lately but again someone is making assertions rather than an algorithm IMO. Some 3rd party ad networks let you really drill down. I think FB can do what this article claims but is not actually doing it.
I can't say what FB did here with much confidence - its an anecodte. But I'd like to point out that it isn't hard to reverse engineer the information out of FB. Buy a targeted ad and then watch the click-throughs. Cross reference the click-throughs from that ad with data from another tracker that knows identities and you've now been able to link whatever your FB ad criteria was to the identities of anyone who clicks through - even if they don't do anything else besides click through.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Bullshit.
Studies have not been able to show negative effects from moderate drinking in pregnancy. The medical community tells women not to drink because they have not been able to show that any level of drinking is "safe".
http://palatepress.com/2012/02/wine/light-drinking-during-pr...
The medical profession is positively paleolithic and incredibly patriarchal when it comes to pregnancy. There is no rational sense of weighing risks by probability, instead it's a "you can never be too safe!" attitude. My wife researched this issue heavily during pregnancy, and what really ground her gears were all the people who say "the safest option is to just not drink at all." But the fact of the matter is that these same people continued to engage in incredibly risky behavior like the wife continuing to drive during pregnancy.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#48call me naive, but it has been my impression that Facebook ads are never that sophisticated. He liked a gay-friendly post and then he got served a gay-friendly ad that happened to be about coming out.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#49This is a bit creepy but it is the kind of thing that could be guessed from facebook activity so it is kind of to be expected. Lately I've been seeing ads that correlate with things that happen to me completely outside Facebook. About things on sites I only access through google for example. I find this more disturbing. I checked the "Block third-party cookies and site data" in Chrome so they shouldn't be able to tra…
This is meant as a cynic humorous comment:
What do you wonder about? Facebook used advertisements that were relevant to your interests and wonderfully subliminal at that so you did not even get annoyed by them. You bought the barbecue sauce because it was perfectly advertised to you and you just couldn't resist.
Re: Facebook knows you’re gay before you do
#50Another thing that Facebook is doing is running a background service on your phone to track your location.
I went to a restaurant. Didn't open the Facebook app while I was there. When I accessed Facebook on my desktop, the first thing it showed me was an ad to like that restaurant.