8 ms·

A couple years ago, when I was still on Facebook, I got in this big fight with my girlfriend. I unfriended her on Facebook as a childish act of vengeance, and I

A couple years ago, when I was still on Facebook, I got in this big fight with my girlfriend. I unfriended her on Facebook as a childish act of vengeance, and I noticed that the ads on the side suddenly turned into ads for dating websites. Maybe it was just me, but from the looks of it, Facebook thought I had broken up with my significant other and was targeting ads based on this assumption. It was then that I realized that every inference they make about you means big business. It means they can now target ads specific to your relationship tendencies on Valentines day, her birthday, his birthday, on your anniversary date, and so on. They can also pick up on events like break-ups and target ads toward you even then. Just another manifestation of Big Data.

jsemrau 13y ago
By Big Data, you surely mean Big Brother ...? Must be me, but this level of data mining was for me the reason to leave.
- Aloha 13y ago
  I'd rather have ads that might be relevant than ones that are not. This stuff can be done while keeping peoples privacy intact.
  - twelvechairs 13y ago
    no it can't. Not unless 'privacy intact' means "people with access to the database will never use it for unintended purposes and it is completely secure from being broken into" both of which can't happen.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    I'd rather have ads that might be relevant than ones that are not. This is preposterous. You would rather be manipulated better? Seriously... This is not a teneble position. Most people would prefer white noise. What you are espousing are simply the talking points of the advertsing indusrty. This is like a congressman thanking the lobbyist for "educating" him on the issues.
    - rescripting 13y ago
      You're missing his argument completely, which is that targeted advertising has upsides for both the advertiser and the consumer. While I prefer no ads over ads, given the choice I'd prefer relevant ads vs random ads. That being said targeted advertising infringes on your privacy. Rail against it for that reason. Don't make false assertions that people would prefer random advertising than advertising that they may actually be able to use.
      - oafitupa 13y ago
        He understood his argument just fine.
      - d0mine 13y ago
        You are assuming a benevolent advertiser that uses knowledge about you in a way that is aligned with your long-term interests. If we assume that a white noise advertising is less effective than a targeted advertising then it is in the interest of most people to prefer the former because a benevolent advertiser is a rare bird in real life.
      - Houshalter 13y ago
        What he is saying is that advertisements manipulate you (likely without your knowledge) and that this is a net cost the the consumer (not to mention even dirtier ads for scams and malware, that's a different subject.) The other kinds of advertisement, the ones that actually inform you of something that is useful to you, do exist. But how much of a benefit are they? I don't think I've ever clicked on an internet ad or bought something because of one.
    - escherba 13y ago
      > You would rather be manipulated better? There is another way to look at it. "Manipulation" is sometimes necessitated by poor targeting.
    - kbenson 13y ago
      You are missing a very big point of advertising, which is not just to convince you the product is better than the competition, but that the product exists. In your example, it's like a congressional representative thanking a lobbyist for alerting them to a problem (which presumably they would then educate themselves on). I see no problem with that. I admit, I would rather the information come in a less obnoxious form in many instances, but let's not kid ourselves that ads have no informational content. Given that they produce some level of useful information, increasing the the level of usefulness without reducing privacy seems a laudable goal.
  - justinpombrio 13y ago
    Wait, if you broke up with someone a few days ago and are now seeing dating ads, how could your privacy have been kept intact? This implies that an ad network has knowledge about your love life.
    - jsmeaton 13y ago
      The assumption is that you've changed your relationship status, and that's how they know you're now single. Telling Facebook that you're single, and them using that information to present an ad for a dating website is not an abuse of private information. You've freely given a first party some information, and they've used that information to display an ad from a 3rd party. There is no abuse of privacy here.
saurik 13y ago
What I find most fascinating about these kinds of situations is that it isn't clear that Facebook even "knows" this information, despite taking advantage of the "knowledge": they have a massive statistical inference system that notices certain kinds of events cluster with certain kinds of behaviors, leading to differing reactions to potential advertisements; so, while the website clearly has learned something about you, and if it were sentient might be able to have a really scary conversation with you, past asking the question "show me users who are likely to click on dating ads today" (which is a sufficiently different question as to require its own inferences and leading to its own errors) a developer at Facebook might not have "access" to this knowledge any more than a brain surgeon can use your brain to figure out who your mother is. In fact, these data scientists working their way through the data themselves are only now "discovering" something their ad engine already "understood" a long time ago, and while them knowing it explicitly might help them improve the UI of their website, it likely won't help their ad optimizer as the optimizer might already be "smarter" than they are.
- primitivesuave 13y ago
  Thank you for the very illustrative explanation. It's fascinating to think about how smart the ad optimization will be after another decade, after the size of the training data set gets exponentially larger and the algorithms become more and more refined.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  Its starting to sound an awful lot like when skynet wakes up it won't be a terrifying overlord, but rather like a crazy old lady that no one really understands who sells kitsch and loves cats.
- xerophtye 13y ago
  Interesting point. it's not necessary that these behaviors are specifically programmed into the ad engine, rather it might have learned them on its own from the enormous amount of data it has.
- Symmetry 13y ago
  The even more interesting thing is the extent that human beings can do the same thing.
higherpurpose 13y ago
And yet Facebook ads don't seem to be that effective - certainly nowhere near where Adsense ads are, which appear because the user would be looking for dating sites, as in your case.
- reddit_clone 13y ago
  Yep. Targeted FB Ads merely seem creepy. The moment I break up with my girlfriend if someone shoves an Ad on my face for a dating site, I would find it very irritating.
  - panacea 13y ago
    It's tone-deaf.
silencio 13y ago
The first Facebook page I saw immediately after marking myself as "engaged" started showing me wedding related ads, and I fully expect "married" in a month will mean ads for home buying and baby clothes. It was a nice change from "we want smart, educated Asian women to donate eggs for $10k+" though.
- joyeuse6701 13y ago
  I would have loved to have the ads "we want smart educated black men to donate sperm for XXX", then again, this might be one of those, 'careful what you wish for, you just might get it' sort of things.
- icambron 13y ago
  The internet seems so much less sinister when you block ads.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
patio11 13y ago
Facebook has a policy where you must target dating-related ads to people who are not in a relationship. See: https://www.facebook.com/help/143949649021372 https://www.facebook.com/help/143949649021372 What you're experiencing post-breakup is merely Facebook normal mode, which your girlfriend was protecting you from. (I'm aware of the targeting rule due to work on Internet advertising and aware of Facebook normal mode due to being a single 20-something male for the majority of my Facebook history.) There's nobody at Facebook who said "Single? Hit him with all the dating ads!", it's an emergent consequence of that policy rule, auction-esque mechanisms for ad placement, and the measurable behavior of most people demographically similar to you, which is that they click on cleavage but buy virtually nothing as a result of Facebook ads.
- goblin89 13y ago
  That's interesting. Still, it doesn't sound too unlikely if Facebook allowed targeting ads to those who just broke up. For example, when you target your Facebook ad you can pick those who have just traveled somewhere, or even “intenders”—those, I assume, who only think about traveling. You can also target your ads to people in long-distance relationships already. There seems to be no way to specify that explicitly in your Facebook profile, and yet Facebook provides the category for advertisers.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- jchendy 13y ago
  That's pretty interesting. Any idea why the dating sites can't target both men and women? > The "Sex" targeting parameter must be set to either "Men" or "Women" and cannot be both
- krcz 13y ago
  Why do they disallow targetting people in open relationships?

jsemrau 13y ago

By Big Data, you surely mean Big Brother ...? Must be me, but this level of data mining was for me the reason to leave.

Aloha 13y ago
I'd rather have ads that might be relevant than ones that are not. This stuff can be done while keeping peoples privacy intact.
- twelvechairs 13y ago
  no it can't. Not unless 'privacy intact' means "people with access to the database will never use it for unintended purposes and it is completely secure from being broken into" both of which can't happen.
- 001sky 13y ago
  I'd rather have ads that might be relevant than ones that are not. This is preposterous. You would rather be manipulated better? Seriously... This is not a teneble position. Most people would prefer white noise. What you are espousing are simply the talking points of the advertsing indusrty. This is like a congressman thanking the lobbyist for "educating" him on the issues.
  - rescripting 13y ago
    You're missing his argument completely, which is that targeted advertising has upsides for both the advertiser and the consumer. While I prefer no ads over ads, given the choice I'd prefer relevant ads vs random ads. That being said targeted advertising infringes on your privacy. Rail against it for that reason. Don't make false assertions that people would prefer random advertising than advertising that they may actually be able to use.
    - oafitupa 13y ago
      He understood his argument just fine.
    - d0mine 13y ago
      You are assuming a benevolent advertiser that uses knowledge about you in a way that is aligned with your long-term interests. If we assume that a white noise advertising is less effective than a targeted advertising then it is in the interest of most people to prefer the former because a benevolent advertiser is a rare bird in real life.
    - Houshalter 13y ago
      What he is saying is that advertisements manipulate you (likely without your knowledge) and that this is a net cost the the consumer (not to mention even dirtier ads for scams and malware, that's a different subject.) The other kinds of advertisement, the ones that actually inform you of something that is useful to you, do exist. But how much of a benefit are they? I don't think I've ever clicked on an internet ad or bought something because of one.
  - escherba 13y ago
    > You would rather be manipulated better? There is another way to look at it. "Manipulation" is sometimes necessitated by poor targeting.
  - kbenson 13y ago
    You are missing a very big point of advertising, which is not just to convince you the product is better than the competition, but that the product exists. In your example, it's like a congressional representative thanking a lobbyist for alerting them to a problem (which presumably they would then educate themselves on). I see no problem with that. I admit, I would rather the information come in a less obnoxious form in many instances, but let's not kid ourselves that ads have no informational content. Given that they produce some level of useful information, increasing the the level of usefulness without reducing privacy seems a laudable goal.
- justinpombrio 13y ago
  Wait, if you broke up with someone a few days ago and are now seeing dating ads, how could your privacy have been kept intact? This implies that an ad network has knowledge about your love life.
  - jsmeaton 13y ago
    The assumption is that you've changed your relationship status, and that's how they know you're now single. Telling Facebook that you're single, and them using that information to present an ad for a dating website is not an abuse of private information. You've freely given a first party some information, and they've used that information to display an ad from a 3rd party. There is no abuse of privacy here.

saurik 13y ago

What I find most fascinating about these kinds of situations is that it isn't clear that Facebook even "knows" this information, despite taking advantage of the "knowledge": they have a massive statistical inference system that notices certain kinds of events cluster with certain kinds of behaviors, leading to differing reactions to potential advertisements; so, while the website clearly has learned something about you, and if it were sentient might be able to have a really scary conversation with you, past asking the question "show me users who are likely to click on dating ads today" (which is a sufficiently different question as to require its own inferences and leading to its own errors) a developer at Facebook might not have "access" to this knowledge any more than a brain surgeon can use your brain to figure out who your mother is. In fact, these data scientists working their way through the data themselves are only now "discovering" something their ad engine already "understood" a long time ago, and while them knowing it explicitly might help them improve the UI of their website, it likely won't help their ad optimizer as the optimizer might already be "smarter" than they are.

primitivesuave 13y ago
Thank you for the very illustrative explanation. It's fascinating to think about how smart the ad optimization will be after another decade, after the size of the training data set gets exponentially larger and the algorithms become more and more refined.
noonespecial 13y ago
Its starting to sound an awful lot like when skynet wakes up it won't be a terrifying overlord, but rather like a crazy old lady that no one really understands who sells kitsch and loves cats.
xerophtye 13y ago
Interesting point. it's not necessary that these behaviors are specifically programmed into the ad engine, rather it might have learned them on its own from the enormous amount of data it has.
Symmetry 13y ago
The even more interesting thing is the extent that human beings can do the same thing.

higherpurpose 13y ago

And yet Facebook ads don't seem to be that effective - certainly nowhere near where Adsense ads are, which appear because the user would be looking for dating sites, as in your case.

reddit_clone 13y ago
Yep. Targeted FB Ads merely seem creepy. The moment I break up with my girlfriend if someone shoves an Ad on my face for a dating site, I would find it very irritating.
- panacea 13y ago
  It's tone-deaf.

silencio 13y ago

The first Facebook page I saw immediately after marking myself as "engaged" started showing me wedding related ads, and I fully expect "married" in a month will mean ads for home buying and baby clothes. It was a nice change from "we want smart, educated Asian women to donate eggs for $10k+" though.

joyeuse6701 13y ago
I would have loved to have the ads "we want smart educated black men to donate sperm for XXX", then again, this might be one of those, 'careful what you wish for, you just might get it' sort of things.
icambron 13y ago
The internet seems so much less sinister when you block ads.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

patio11 13y ago

Facebook has a policy where you must target dating-related ads to people who are not in a relationship. See: https://www.facebook.com/help/143949649021372 https://www.facebook.com/help/143949649021372 What you're experiencing post-breakup is merely Facebook normal mode, which your girlfriend was protecting you from. (I'm aware of the targeting rule due to work on Internet advertising and aware of Facebook normal mode due to being a single 20-something male for the majority of my Facebook history.) There's nobody at Facebook who said "Single? Hit him with all the dating ads!", it's an emergent consequence of that policy rule, auction-esque mechanisms for ad placement, and the measurable behavior of most people demographically similar to you, which is that they click on cleavage but buy virtually nothing as a result of Facebook ads.

goblin89 13y ago
That's interesting. Still, it doesn't sound too unlikely if Facebook allowed targeting ads to those who just broke up. For example, when you target your Facebook ad you can pick those who have just traveled somewhere, or even “intenders”—those, I assume, who only think about traveling. You can also target your ads to people in long-distance relationships already. There seems to be no way to specify that explicitly in your Facebook profile, and yet Facebook provides the category for advertisers.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jchendy 13y ago
That's pretty interesting. Any idea why the dating sites can't target both men and women? > The "Sex" targeting parameter must be set to either "Men" or "Women" and cannot be both
krcz 13y ago
Why do they disallow targetting people in open relationships?