10 ms·

‘Nanotargeting’ Facebook users based on their perceived interests

99 points by Hard_Space 5y ago

AzzieElbab 5y ago
Beware of nanozuks!!! Seriously, what is so malicious about delivering ads based on your personal preferences? Do I need to be targeted by ads that the rest of my demographic prefers?
- reilly3000 5y ago
  There are so many ways to abuse micro-targeting. Say hypothetically you’re a private investigator and you have a target that you want to get into their email. You could look at their Facebook page to find their favorite band, food, and travel destination. With that info plus their zip code you could make ads that will just target them personally. Offer free tickets to their favorite band on a landing page with registration, then store their commonly reused password in plain text-done. This type of ‘nano-targeting’ was the strategy that Cambridge Analytica used to discourage millions of Hillary Clinton supporters from voting. Its been used for countless forms of abuse, manipulation, and data gathering, where even impression counts can be revealing, no clicks needed.
  - AzzieElbab 5y ago
    Tragic role of Russian nanozucks in 2016 presidential election cannot be overstated. When did we start believing that handing out millions of flyers is the same thing as selling millions of cars?
  - vadfa 5y ago
    Discouraging someone from voting is now "abuse"?
    - kesselvon 5y ago
      It's pretty bad to run campaigns that discourage voting. Accepted practice is to encourage to vote for someone, and not discouraging participation completely.
z_zetetic_z 5y ago
"In 2018 an AdNews study established that on average, Facebook algorithmically assigns 357 interests per user, out of which 134 were rated as ‘accurate’." Ha ha ha! Ha ha, ha ha ha! Ha ha! What a joke!
- lobocinza 5y ago
  And I imagine variability to be huge in this case. Also average may not 'mean' much as fat tails may cause it to look better/worse that what it actually is.
- kjrose 5y ago
  So < 50% wow.
m_ke 5y ago
Can't wait for Facebook to start tracking what we do 24/7 in the physical world. https://mobile.twitter.com/ylecun/status/1448625453586071557 https://mobile.twitter.com/ylecun/status/1448625453586071557
- AzzieElbab 5y ago
  google and apple already do
  - m_ke 5y ago
    Yeah but now they'll be able to see everything you come across at 60fps
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
helen___keller 5y ago
> The research also suggests that ‘nanotargeting’ users in this way is not only cheap, but occasionally free, since Facebook often will not charge an advertiser for an underserved campaign (i.e. a campaign that only reached one person). Not free for long, I imagine, now that this is published
- vadfa 5y ago
  This has been known for a very long time, I remember reading about people doing stuff like this to piss others off a loooong time ago
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    the ones I read were people getting their dream jobs because they were smart enough to target an ad about how smart they were and deserved the job to the person doing the hiring.
- Damogran6 5y ago
  Probably not. I guarantee one or several really smart people looking at the targeting problem would have considered it during the initial research effort. "I'm going to target X people with this, what are the cost models when X=1, 100, 1K, 1M targets?"
EarthLaunch 5y ago
Facebook is under attack because it's not yet giving all info to the people smearing it. After these stories stop, you will know Facebook owns you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawayfear 5y ago
  It's under attack because tyrants masquerading as bureacrats and politicians want to know everything about everyone so they can control everyone. Facebook has a lot of this data and uses it for advertising products and services and adding new features, and sometimes their algorithms can get out of hand the same way cliques on Reddit or Twitter get out of hand when people get brainwashed by doom-scrolling and clickbait. It's about power and control. These politicians don't actually care about people beyond that, or even about what Facebook is really up to. It's a smear campaign to destroy a legitimate platform that unites people and connects people, because that is contra to what the powers that be want. They don't want that unity. They want fragmentation and isolation in society so everything can decline while they rise in power.
joshvm 5y ago
This has been possible for a while, people have even done it as a prank: https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/ https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking... The loophole to get round minimum audiences is easy - you use the target email address and add eg 99 people of the opposite gender. Then you set the audience ad to the target's gender. Though in principle Facebook should be able to check the effective reach of the ad and stop that.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Such a good prank. Imagine a future where one employee is assigned per person to interview and understand exactly what you need. They could just order things before you ask!
  - idiotsecant 5y ago
    Not hard to imagine with advances in machine learning. I'd guess you will almost certainly have at least the equivalent cognitive power of one person monitoring your purchasing needs within the next 20 years.
- legitster 5y ago
  One of my favorite tech pranks. Although it should be noted that Facebook has long since changed their the way they handle targeting and it's no longer possible to use this method.
  - brianswichkow 5y ago
    OP of the prank here. Grateful for your appreciation!
taneq 5y ago
'Nanotargeting' is an exciting new word for 'stalking'.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I'm waiting for the exciting new movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, The Night Nanotargeter.
- ssivark 5y ago
  …or “gaslighting”.
kjrose 5y ago
I thought Facebook made some changes to prevent this after the last time someone demonstrated how easy it was... I guess those changes didn't work. Makes sense considering how you can pretty much uniquely identify anyone with a zip code, gender and age.
m3at 5y ago
As commenters have noted this has been done before. Likely, the reason why this can't be "fixed" is that it's a result of the curse of dimensionality [1] in the statistical sense: more dimensions make it exponentially easier to separate the space. This quote from the research suggest it as well, the error rate keep being divided by two while adding dimension (=interests) linearly: > the formula estimated that ’12, 18, 22, and 27 random interests make a user unique on FB with a probability of 50%, 80%, 90%, and 95%, respectively’. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality
- cortesoft 5y ago
  I would be pretty easy to set a lower limit on the number of people targeted by an ad. If the target audience is smaller than, say, 500 people, don't let that target be chosen.
  - djhn 5y ago
    Surely that's extremely limiting for small businesses.
xyzzy21 5y ago
Yet another reason to never use Facebook! Using Facebook has been an IQ test - you are below 100 if you use it!
legitster 5y ago
> The paper’s authors point out a number of cases where nanotargeting was used in a deceptive manner, including the time in 2017 that UK Labour politician Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of the government’s opposition party, decreed that Labour should run a Facebook ad campaign to encourage voter registration. > Labour party chiefs disapproved the idea, but rather than entering into conflict, simply implemented a £5000 ad campaign designed to only target Corbyn and his associates, as well as a select number of sympathetic journalists. No-one else saw those ads. I'm not going to lie, that's a pretty impressive way to get someone off of your back.
IshKebab 5y ago
So say I wanted to target Bill Gates, how do I magically know what combination of interests will select him?

99 points by Hard_Space 5y ago

Beware of nanozuks!!! Seriously, what is so malicious about delivering ads based on your personal preferences? Do I need to be targeted by ads that the rest of my demographic prefers?

reilly3000 5y ago
There are so many ways to abuse micro-targeting. Say hypothetically you’re a private investigator and you have a target that you want to get into their email. You could look at their Facebook page to find their favorite band, food, and travel destination. With that info plus their zip code you could make ads that will just target them personally. Offer free tickets to their favorite band on a landing page with registration, then store their commonly reused password in plain text-done. This type of ‘nano-targeting’ was the strategy that Cambridge Analytica used to discourage millions of Hillary Clinton supporters from voting. Its been used for countless forms of abuse, manipulation, and data gathering, where even impression counts can be revealing, no clicks needed.
- AzzieElbab 5y ago
  Tragic role of Russian nanozucks in 2016 presidential election cannot be overstated. When did we start believing that handing out millions of flyers is the same thing as selling millions of cars?
- vadfa 5y ago
  Discouraging someone from voting is now "abuse"?
  - kesselvon 5y ago
    It's pretty bad to run campaigns that discourage voting. Accepted practice is to encourage to vote for someone, and not discouraging participation completely.

z_zetetic_z 5y ago

"In 2018 an AdNews study established that on average, Facebook algorithmically assigns 357 interests per user, out of which 134 were rated as ‘accurate’." Ha ha ha! Ha ha, ha ha ha! Ha ha! What a joke!

lobocinza 5y ago
And I imagine variability to be huge in this case. Also average may not 'mean' much as fat tails may cause it to look better/worse that what it actually is.
kjrose 5y ago
So < 50% wow.

m_ke 5y ago

Can't wait for Facebook to start tracking what we do 24/7 in the physical world. https://mobile.twitter.com/ylecun/status/1448625453586071557 https://mobile.twitter.com/ylecun/status/1448625453586071557

AzzieElbab 5y ago
google and apple already do
- m_ke 5y ago
  Yeah but now they'll be able to see everything you come across at 60fps
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

helen___keller 5y ago

> The research also suggests that ‘nanotargeting’ users in this way is not only cheap, but occasionally free, since Facebook often will not charge an advertiser for an underserved campaign (i.e. a campaign that only reached one person). Not free for long, I imagine, now that this is published

vadfa 5y ago
This has been known for a very long time, I remember reading about people doing stuff like this to piss others off a loooong time ago
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  the ones I read were people getting their dream jobs because they were smart enough to target an ad about how smart they were and deserved the job to the person doing the hiring.
Damogran6 5y ago
Probably not. I guarantee one or several really smart people looking at the targeting problem would have considered it during the initial research effort. "I'm going to target X people with this, what are the cost models when X=1, 100, 1K, 1M targets?"

EarthLaunch 5y ago

Facebook is under attack because it's not yet giving all info to the people smearing it. After these stories stop, you will know Facebook owns you.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawayfear 5y ago
It's under attack because tyrants masquerading as bureacrats and politicians want to know everything about everyone so they can control everyone. Facebook has a lot of this data and uses it for advertising products and services and adding new features, and sometimes their algorithms can get out of hand the same way cliques on Reddit or Twitter get out of hand when people get brainwashed by doom-scrolling and clickbait. It's about power and control. These politicians don't actually care about people beyond that, or even about what Facebook is really up to. It's a smear campaign to destroy a legitimate platform that unites people and connects people, because that is contra to what the powers that be want. They don't want that unity. They want fragmentation and isolation in society so everything can decline while they rise in power.

joshvm 5y ago

This has been possible for a while, people have even done it as a prank: https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/ https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking... The loophole to get round minimum audiences is easy - you use the target email address and add eg 99 people of the opposite gender. Then you set the audience ad to the target's gender. Though in principle Facebook should be able to check the effective reach of the ad and stop that.

mensetmanusman 5y ago
Such a good prank. Imagine a future where one employee is assigned per person to interview and understand exactly what you need. They could just order things before you ask!
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  Not hard to imagine with advances in machine learning. I'd guess you will almost certainly have at least the equivalent cognitive power of one person monitoring your purchasing needs within the next 20 years.
legitster 5y ago
One of my favorite tech pranks. Although it should be noted that Facebook has long since changed their the way they handle targeting and it's no longer possible to use this method.
- brianswichkow 5y ago
  OP of the prank here. Grateful for your appreciation!

taneq 5y ago

'Nanotargeting' is an exciting new word for 'stalking'.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I'm waiting for the exciting new movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, The Night Nanotargeter.
ssivark 5y ago
…or “gaslighting”.

kjrose 5y ago

I thought Facebook made some changes to prevent this after the last time someone demonstrated how easy it was... I guess those changes didn't work. Makes sense considering how you can pretty much uniquely identify anyone with a zip code, gender and age.

m3at 5y ago

As commenters have noted this has been done before. Likely, the reason why this can't be "fixed" is that it's a result of the curse of dimensionality [1] in the statistical sense: more dimensions make it exponentially easier to separate the space. This quote from the research suggest it as well, the error rate keep being divided by two while adding dimension (=interests) linearly: > the formula estimated that ’12, 18, 22, and 27 random interests make a user unique on FB with a probability of 50%, 80%, 90%, and 95%, respectively’. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality

cortesoft 5y ago
I would be pretty easy to set a lower limit on the number of people targeted by an ad. If the target audience is smaller than, say, 500 people, don't let that target be chosen.
- djhn 5y ago
  Surely that's extremely limiting for small businesses.

xyzzy21 5y ago

Yet another reason to never use Facebook! Using Facebook has been an IQ test - you are below 100 if you use it!

legitster 5y ago

> The paper’s authors point out a number of cases where nanotargeting was used in a deceptive manner, including the time in 2017 that UK Labour politician Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of the government’s opposition party, decreed that Labour should run a Facebook ad campaign to encourage voter registration. > Labour party chiefs disapproved the idea, but rather than entering into conflict, simply implemented a £5000 ad campaign designed to only target Corbyn and his associates, as well as a select number of sympathetic journalists. No-one else saw those ads. I'm not going to lie, that's a pretty impressive way to get someone off of your back.

IshKebab 5y ago

So say I wanted to target Bill Gates, how do I magically know what combination of interests will select him?