Prompt Cast
The Invasive Technology Behind Facebook's Targeted Ads
TLDR Facebook denies listening to conversations through phone microphones, but their targeted ads suggest otherwise. Facebook's Pixel technology tracks online activity and personal information, allowing them to categorize users and advertise based on browsing history and friends' interests.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
People have been reporting that Facebook and Instagram are using the microphone on their phones to listen to their conversations and advertise to them based on what they're saying, and while some dismiss it as coincidence, others have experienced incidents that are hard to explain.
03:50
Facebook denies listening to people's conversations via their phone's microphone to target ads, but their refusal to offer a satisfactory explanation for targeted ads appearing in someone's feed suggests that the technology they use to target ads is invasive, as confirmed by Antonio Garcia Martinez, the guy who first built that technology.
07:19
Facebook's Pixel technology tracks users' online activity, including purchases, items added to carts, and time spent on web pages, while also buying personal history data from companies that sell credit reports and other personal information.
10:21
Facebook categorizes users based on their online activity and personal information, and can advertise content to users based on their friends' interests and preferences, as demonstrated by a friend who received right-wing political ads with white supremacist undertones after liking his brother-in-law's posts about white pride and white nationalism.
13:44
Facebook's main goal is to learn about users in order to sell them products, as demonstrated by the example of a woman searching for perfume and then being shown an ad for that perfume on her son's Facebook page.
18:14
Facebook has the ability to track your online activity and show you ads based on your browsing history and the interests of your friends.
21:43
Facebook's complex algorithms make it difficult to determine exactly how ads are served to users, even for Facebook themselves.
25:54
Facebook's algorithms for ad targeting and suggested friends are separate, so it's unclear whether Facebook is actually listening to users' conversations, but there are ways to prevent Facebook from tracking and disable microphone privileges on the app.
Categories:
Technology
Society & Culture
