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> Ad Observer only collects information about the ads people see, not personal posts or users’ personal information. This statement seems to be contradicted wi
by freeopinion 6y ago
> Ad Observer only collects information about the ads people see, not personal posts or users’ personal information.
This statement seems to be contradicted within the article itself.
For instance, Mozilla claims the tool is used by a newsroom in Utah, linking to an article titled "ksl-investigates-who-is-behind-the-millions-in-facebook-political-ads-targeting-utah." So presumably the tool identifies the location of the target.
The article also claims that the tool proves that Facebook is still selling discriminatory ads. Does this mean that the tool knows things like race, gender, religion, etc. about the user?
If a user has willingly shared such information with the tool, I don't see a problem. I'm not sure how Facebook would even have any standing in a legal case. But the article does seem to contradict itself about user privacy.
- totalZero 6y agoI have often seen apps saying things like, 'we don't use any personally identifiable information; we aggregate and anonymize location data, stripping it of your IP address and storing only the region and ISP.' Or whatever. Not all metadata can identify or profile the individual from whom the data were generated. Here's what they say on the Ad Observer website: If you want, you can enter basic demographic information about yourself in the tool to help improve our understanding of why advertisers targeted you. However, we’ll never ask for information that could identify you. If that's the case, then I don't think the statement is false. I tried to find a standalone privacy policy, but it's not in the GitHub readme.