I don't condone these ads. They do look like stalking and harassment. One word I would use to describe these is "crass". She says "I just mostly came here to s

I don't condone these ads. They do look like stalking and harassment. One word I would use to describe these is "crass". She says "I just mostly came here to see pictures of my friends' dogs and kids", but what she wants from Instagram is different from what Instagram thinks she's interested in. It's obvious (leaving aside bugs in Instagram) that she has visited other websites to look up information on yoga and also probably on bras, or shown some kind of engagement with these topics in a place where FB/Instagram was watching, so to speak. This is where things become confounding, because the actual sellers of bras and other clothing have decided that they want to target people doing yoga, which is related to general fitness, which is related to feeling comfortable while engaging in fitness related activities, which they also believe is about looking good — it's a broad net that they cast so that they get more people to look at ads and buy their products. The sellers have also decided that these kind of pictures are what help them (oblivious to the actual experiences of those seeing the ads and the consequences). Of course, this seems like the targeting is actually pointless and that they're wasting their money, but this is how a lot of ads work and how a lot of these ad serving products (FB, Insta, Google, etc.) work. They're still not good enough to target people who're more likely to buy, but competition in a specific product/service space makes sellers wanting to grab as much as possible based on ill informed hypotheses of "their target customer is ____, _____, ____". It's also clear that Instagram and FB working together isn't really that good for the users, and whatever services FB and Instagram use to profile people around the web look shady as well in how and where they collect information and how they use that information to make inferences that are creating such experiences. If it's not bras, it may be lipsticks or moisturizers or slimming products or bags or so many other things that are sold as things that we should aspire for. This problem is not going anywhere unless people get more educated about online tracking, how to have at least some control over it and also demand more from these companies that provide "things for free". In this context, this book "The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy" [1] is something more people should read. [1]: https://www.nostarch.com/smartgirlsguide https://www.nostarch.com/smartgirlsguide