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Cool script. My hack is to live in a country where the local language is not my own, and not the one I have set in my Facebook settings. As a result, Facebook
by junto 2y ago
Cool script.
My hack is to live in a country where the local language is not my own, and not the one I have set in my Facebook settings.
As a result, Facebook rarely has advertisements that can target me, because my language has been filtered out by the advertisers.
When one does appear, it’s nearly always in the local language, so I’m kind of deaf to it and I’m not going to actively respond to anyway.
Luckily they haven’t figured that out yet, even though I’ve been an Facebook user for many years.
- stavros 2y agoMy hack is to live in a country that forces Facebook to give me an opt-out, and then I click "no" when Facebook asks.
- useEffect 2y agomy hack is just to not have facebook
- willcipriano 2y agoMy hack is being just young enough that having a Facebook would make me feel old.
- gerdesj 2y agoYou have rather succinctly noted that sodding huge walled off communities come and go, with time. ::FAC3:B00C: is already very old school and largely irrelevant. They just haven't noticed yet. Whither Geocities and Compuserve?
- m1117 2y agoBut I'm addicted to the feed!
- 39896880 2y agoFacebook makes shadow profiles of you anyway
- somat 2y agoThen facebook gets to track my shadow self.
- scubbo 2y agoWhy would a person who objects to Facebook tracking them via their actual profile not object to Facebook tracking them via inferences?
- serf 2y agobecause the far-parent problem was 'facebook has ads that target me.' an easy way to avoid the problem of seeing ads on facebook is.. to avoid facebook. yes, this doesn't solve the privacy and ad-affiliate network problem -- but that wasn't the stated problem.
- ryandrake 2y agoYea they can track my shadow profile all they want and I don’t care. I don’t visit them so they aren’t showing me ads.
- Systemmanic 2y agoWhat country has this? Sounds great.
- stavros 2y agoAny EU country. Meta is also forced to ask you before associating profiles between its properties, eg Facebook and Instagram.
- Galaco 2y agoSame situation for me. Basically the only ads I ever see in my native language are for American expat tax services (I’m not American, have never visited the continent and have never expressed interest in doing so). Sometimes I wonder just how good this adtech really all is when the best they can do is figure out I speak English (browser language) and live not in an English speaking country (IP address) and just assume therefore I am American.
- lancesells 2y agoThat's probably less to do with Meta and their tech than a marketer setting up their ads in the way you describe (language: english, country: yours). I'm not sure you can even target nationality at all.
- namaria 2y agoA lot of the filtering of whom to show ads to is heuristics to try and target 'high value costumers'. Getting target with very irrelevant ads might just mean you are considered low value by most advertisers so you get served ads from advertisers willing to pay very little per impression. I'd take as a signal your online cloaking is working as intended. I often get very random ads and recommendations in languages I don't even speak so I think my online anonimity fu is working as intended. Source - worked with ad tech a few years ago.
- Tade0 2y agoI set my language to English (Pirate) a long time ago to similar effect. The option has been removed since, making me part of an ever shrinking community of essentially random people - not a particularly interesting target for advertisers.