Facebook ads

[DBT]

I wonder what would happen if I ran a whole lot of searches for 'bomb making at home' just for fun?

Just a guess, but probably a visit from an FBI agent or an agent from the Department of Homeland Security or the ATF.

No fun to be found there. None at all.

 

[skepticalbip]

I wonder what would happen if I ran a whole lot of searches for 'bomb making at home' just for fun?

Just a guess, but probably a visit from an FBI agent or an agent from the Department of Homeland Security or the ATF.

No fun to be found there. None at all.

I'm glad that I mentioned one of the possible consequences just in case you decided to actually have a little fun by spoofing facebook this way. I'd hate to see anyone just having fun being forced to explain it to such serious people.

 

[DBT]

No fun to be found there. None at all.

I'm glad that I mentioned one of the possible consequences just in case you decided to actually have a little fun by spoofing facebook this way. I'd hate to see anyone just having fun being forced to explain it to such serious people.

I wouldn't do it. It was just an attempt at humour. It's possible that merely making mention of bombs could raise a red flag in some Government agency computer. Who knows.

 

[rousseau]

I like to go on occasional search-sprees to change the flavor of my fb ads. One month it’s horses. Next month it’s race cars, then gold. It’s fun.

Every now and then partner and I will turn on our phones and spend about a minute saying random brand names and products into our phone.. it works.

The weird thing is that these days I get *a lot* of ads for cars, as well as match.com on Facebook, and yet both of these things are completely irrelevant to me. I figure the car thing is because I spent months searching for cars, but my dad actually physically bought my car, and I paid him back. The latter is because partner and I haven't put our relationship status on Facebook. Somehow Facebook hasn't inferred from the 1000 posts that my partner and I are tagged in together that we're a couple.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

So we have to accept an infringement of our personal space to keep facebook going?
Oh well, it's more a minor annoyance to me than anything.
It does them no good to shove their crap in my face.
If I need a product or service I go find it myself.

The usual way to deal with this is to get a VPN. This is a proxy between you and the net. Or use something like Tails, a live Linux CD that allow anonymous browsing through TOR. Or set up a TOR extension to your favorite browser. You can also use extension like Privacy Badger to help defeat tracking etc.

Welcome to the Internet 2018.

 

[RavenSky]

I like to go on occasional search-sprees to change the flavor of my fb ads. One month it’s horses. Next month it’s race cars, then gold. It’s fun.

I like this approach!

But can I please just repeat to everyone in general: This is NOT "Facebook". Blaming Facebook because you (general "you") are seeing ads for products/services/topics you have recently searched for is like blaming one's local newspaper because they accepted an ad for the local grocery store you shop at.

It is every individual company website that each of us is visiting or otherwise expressing an interest in; and it is that company or similar companies that are paying money to have these ads delivered to you via Facebook, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, etc.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I like to go on occasional search-sprees to change the flavor of my fb ads. One month it’s horses. Next month it’s race cars, then gold. It’s fun.

I like this approach!

But can I please just repeat to everyone in general: This is NOT "Facebook". Blaming Facebook because you (general "you") are seeing ads for products/services/topics you have recently searched for is like blaming one's local newspaper because they accepted an ad for the local grocery store you shop at.

It is every individual company website that each of us is visiting or otherwise expressing an interest in; and it is that company or similar companies that are paying money to have these ads delivered to you via Facebook, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, etc.

But Facebook, Google, etc are the ones who's entire revenue model is based off of profiting off of this. They are the ones who write the algorithms that determine which of these companies' ads go to which of their users.

It's like if you're against sex slavery, you can be angry at the customers, but your white hot rage should be directed at the pimps and traffickers who receive the money and make the product available. *

* Ya, I just compared Facebook's business strategy to sex slavery. I frigging went there.

 

[Underseer]

Is facebook monitoring everything we do on the internet? Whenever I search for a product or service when I go to my facebook timeline I see ad posts for the stuff I searched for. Is this normal?

It's not just Facebook. It's pretty much everything.

Didn't you notice that you do not pay Google for maintaining that search engine? How do you think they pay for all those servers, databases, and crawler bots? They keep track of every search you do and sell that information to marketing companies. If you visit almost any web site, chances are that they're collecting information on whatever you do at their site and sell that information to marketers.

Remember the old adage: if you're not paying for the service, then you're the product being sold.

 

[Underseer]

I like to go on occasional search-sprees to change the flavor of my fb ads. One month it’s horses. Next month it’s race cars, then gold. It’s fun.

I like this approach!

But can I please just repeat to everyone in general: This is NOT "Facebook". Blaming Facebook because you (general "you") are seeing ads for products/services/topics you have recently searched for is like blaming one's local newspaper because they accepted an ad for the local grocery store you shop at.

It is every individual company website that each of us is visiting or otherwise expressing an interest in; and it is that company or similar companies that are paying money to have these ads delivered to you via Facebook, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, etc.

Or, you could use DuckDuckGo instead of Google for your searches. They (supposedly) don't sell your info to anyone.

 

[RavenSky]

I like to go on occasional search-sprees to change the flavor of my fb ads. One month it’s horses. Next month it’s race cars, then gold. It’s fun.

I like this approach!

But can I please just repeat to everyone in general: This is NOT "Facebook". Blaming Facebook because you (general "you") are seeing ads for products/services/topics you have recently searched for is like blaming one's local newspaper because they accepted an ad for the local grocery store you shop at.

It is every individual company website that each of us is visiting or otherwise expressing an interest in; and it is that company or similar companies that are paying money to have these ads delivered to you via Facebook, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, etc.

But Facebook, Google, etc are the ones who's entire revenue model is based off of profiting off of this. They are the ones who write the algorithms that determine which of these companies' ads go to which of their users.

It's like if you're against sex slavery, you can be angry at the customers, but your white hot rage should be directed at the pimps and traffickers who receive the money and make the product available. *

* Ya, I just compared Facebook's business strategy to sex slavery. I frigging went there.

 

[Bronzeage]

Is facebook monitoring everything we do on the internet? Whenever I search for a product or service when I go to my facebook timeline I see ad posts for the stuff I searched for. Is this normal?

It's not just Facebook. It's pretty much everything.

Didn't you notice that you do not pay Google for maintaining that search engine? How do you think they pay for all those servers, databases, and crawler bots? They keep track of every search you do and sell that information to marketing companies. If you visit almost any web site, chances are that they're collecting information on whatever you do at their site and sell that information to marketers.

Remember the old adage: if you're not paying for the service, then you're the product being sold.

The first time I created an online account which required a user name, I discovered that Ironage was taken. My second choice was available. This became my online handle wherever I logged on. When it came time to choose a professional pen name, Bron Zeage was an obvious choice. It was fortunate for me, the surname Zeage does not exist any language which used the Roman alphabet.

As a result of almost 15 years of Bron Zeage stalking the webs, Google, facebook, Linkedin and plenty of other information mining operations, think Bron Zeage is a living breathing person. He is, of course, but the algorithms used to detect fake names and identities, sniff me and say, "He's okay."

 

[Elixir]

...they [Google] keep track of every search you do and sell that information to marketing companies.

That's more like what FB does (can do). Google really is free if a Company wants to dominate certain search terms using in-house search engine optimization (SEO). But most of those ads that pop up while you're browsing are coming from third-party "re-marketing" companies that charge for doing the analytics and placements. It usually originates for you and me when we visit a site that has contracted a company like that... and most companies do.
There are also "content distribution" companies that will get pretty much whatever you want linked from pages with millions of followers (CNN.com, NFL.com etc.). The revenue streams are many and tangled.