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Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

nytimes.com

81–90 of 94 posts

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

#81

Well clearly they have some work to do because I'm labeled as very liberal but I'm actually conservative - and I engage with politics on Facebook a decent amount I do like to read liberal articles though because I find them interesting

It has me labeled as very liberal too, but I've "liked" guns, firearms, and more conservative politicians than liberal ones, etc.

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

#82

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:…

>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

but a shopkeeper 100 years ago would have longstanding relationships with those people, they would have to face significant consequences if they used this information to swindle people. They have as much stake in maintaining an honest relationship as the shopper, its a symbiotic relationship.

a distributed system of databases owned and traded by conglomerates has none of that

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

#83

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…

Just because they’re not showing you all the data and analysis capabilities they have doesn’t mean they don’t have them. Why would Facebook waste their effort making sure that all user data is exposed through their decrepit and intentionally hidden ads preferences section when they could spend that effort analyzing that data and making it available to their partners?

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

#84
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.

> Apparently I am targeted for ads related to bubble wrap.

Isn’t everyone?

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

#85
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.

And I, "Derailment". Don't know where that came from, or even what it is.

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

#87

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...

Apparently, one of my hobbies is Shapeshifting. And another is Resin.

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

#88

As someone not from the US, I don't quite understand while people go "democrat vs republican". Not only can democracy and republicanism coexist, but they frequently do (I live in a democratic republic, for example). Actually, I think a republican democracy is what makes sense the most, and probably amongst the most common forms of government around. Anybody care to explain why these stances seem opposed to US-citizen…

> As someone not from the US, I don't quite understand while people go "democrat vs republican".

The are US political parties (Democratic Party and Republican Party).

> Not only can democracy and republicanism coexist, but they frequently do

Well, yeah, and the US Democratic Party's original name referenced both -- it was originally the Democratic-Republican Party -- it just got shortened over time...

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

#89

If I were facebook I would hesitate to make this so visible because I wouldn't want my advertising clients to know how unsophisticated and inaccurate these inferences seem to be.

These are not the tags Facebook uses to target ads. Well, they are included, but they use far more hidden, or "dark tags"

Still, a client might not know that, and anyway it doesn't paint a picture of sophistication in the realm of predicting user interests.

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

#90

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:…

I think by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" GP is referring to the possibility that companies are paying for advertising based on the notion that it will be targeted using sophisticated metadata on users, but that the metadata is in fact far less sophisticated than touted.

One would think that all significant ad spend by sane companies is made in the context of an empirical study demonstrating the uptick in the relevant metrics caused by (smaller) ad spend. But honestly, I share the suspicions of the GP, that western capitalism in certain areas (e.g. Bro-y advertising) is influenced more by group think and connections and unthinking continuation of established business practices, than by truly objective data-driven decision making.

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