Article Image

IPFS News Link • Science, Medicine and Technology

How to Change the Ads You See on Facebook

• https://www.makeuseof.com

Facebook now has over 2 billion monthly active users. Unsurprisingly, it's collecting as much data about them as possible. This is to help advertisers target ads at the right people.

If you're on Facebook, did you know that you can see what Facebook thinks it knows about you?

In this article, we'll explain how Facebook collects this data about you, how to view your Ad Preferences, and (crucially) how to change them if they're inaccurate.

Do You Know What Facebook Knows About You?

According to research conducted by the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of American Facebook users don't know that Facebook maintains a list of their interests and traits for advertising purposes.

Facebook collects this information in the background, but you can see it on a page called Your Ad Preferences. Since Facebook is trying to figure out these preferences from your activity, it isn't always accurate. According to the survey, 59 percent of people say the data reflected their real-life interests, while 27 percent say its not very or not at all accurate.

Facebook reflected in phone

When shown how Facebook classifies their interests, 51 percent of respondents said that they were not comfortable that such a list existed.

Facebook also assigns some users a political and multicultural affinity. The latter is not your actual race or ethnic background, but instead your understanding or empathy towards a group.

Around half of the people in the survey had been assigned a political affinity. And while 73 percent say it's accurate, 27 percent say otherwise. Only about a fifth of people had a multicultural affinity. A sizable 60 percent say their affinity is strong to the group they had been assigned to, while 37 percent say otherwise.


PirateBox.info