Instagram ads Facebook won't show you
See, the trick here is to put all the personal data onto an oddly specific t-shirt that's for sale.
Available now, size "Large" t-shirt for sale!
"I'm a proud dad living in Seattle who attended the University of Washington and once went on a trip to Central America for a while. I have a dog and like to read and occasionally complain about politics."
I'd buy this if I saw it, if just for the lulz and nihilistic outlook when it comes to privacy.
In fact... if I were a privacy-focused company, I'd 100% do this as a marketing stunt.
A pretty cool piece.
Too bad they have to use text to make their point. It would essentially reach zero people due to rules (https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/how-to-adher...). Then there's personal attributes (https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/perso...). Then ads that do not sell products/services follow murky rules, and talking about Facebook itself is usually prohibited. (edited from: because the rule they're actually breaking is the "No Text" rule in Facebook ad creatives.)
Is there non-symbolic imagery that they could have used to say the same thing?
Perhaps they should have retained someone with this kind of creative experience.
Looking critically, the most narrow and serious obstacle to advocate for privacy is storytelling.
This is both an ad for Signal and an ad for Facebook Ad's ability to target depending on who is reading it.
What I mean is that for your average consumer, they'll read this and be horrified that Facebook is using the information they voluntarily gave Facebook to make money. But someone who is buying ads will read this same thing, be impressed by just how tightly Facebook can target, and put $10K into an Ad Account to try it out.
As to me, I use Facebook, I am willing to see ads within Facebook using the information I share with Facebook but where I draw the line is Facebook "leaking" into my wider web browsing history (either tracking me, or using my non-Facebook browsing to advertise to me on Facebook). Therefore, I use Mozilla's Facebook Container extension and blacklist Facebook/Instagram's "Share" tracking buttons.
I also access Facebook from a mobile browser rather than app and use Signal instead of Facebook Messager, to limit Facebook's ability to track my location and other phone meta-data.
Years ago I added a widget to the user interface on wikipedia for logged in users so that people were able to add geography specific notification to tell editors about meetups that were coming up in their area.
It turned out that if the message displayed was too specific, like "Upcoming meetup in your area: [New York meetup]" people got rather angry about the privacy invasion.
So instead the instructions for setting the messages had to tell the authors to instead say stuff like "Find out about upcoming meetups!" -- which of course was only displayed if there actually was an upcoming meetup near where you geolocated.
Of course, regardless of if any message is displayed the site could guess your geography based on your IP address. The exposure of private information was nearly identical-- actually arguably worse because someone might mention that they're currently seeing a notice without realizing that this fact leaked their geography... but the more generic messages didn't generate complaints.
(and WP policy effectively makes it impossible to edit via Tor, even for established users in good standing)
Sometimes it seems people care a lot more about enjoying the illusion of privacy than they care about actually having privacy.
> The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses. Facebook was not into that idea.
Genius! But it’s unclear to me if the examples in the blog were actual ads shown to users before their account was blocked, or the campaign never got off the ground at all. If it’s the latter, the blog should make it clearer otherwise it makes it look like those were real ads
Facebook already has a way in-app for you to see why you were targeted with an ad (on any ad click the 3-dot menu -> "Why am I seeing this ad?"). The tool will tell you things like whether you were retargeted vs targeted using lookalike audiences, targeted based off of your age, gender, location, interests, etc.
I don't think this is the "slam dunk" the author intends it to be, but I'm sure it will resonate with the Wokeâ„¢ hackernews crowd regardless.
I like whoever is running Signal's blog.
This isn't shocking at all. If anything, it makes me want to make a business account so I can see first hand what targeting criteria would be available to me.
I'm not an FB user, but I might as well be, since I have an Instagram account that I mindlessly scroll from time to time.
This doesn't seem very effective to me. 99% of people who see an ad like that will not care. It's already common knowledge that Zuck's gonna take your data.
"Facebook knows I'm a single teacher in Moscow who likes soccer? ... So what?
And that's before taking into account that the labels FB/etc. put on you are often incorrect, further diluting the perceived seriousness of this privacy leak.
Signal hitting hard as always. I wonder if they are trying to get people to stop talking about their cryptocurrency hiccup.
I've run ads on FB before, but this is an incredibly simple article to share with my non-technically minded friends and family as to why these services collect too much data. We need more of these simple and concise posts to share outside of the tech-bubble we live in.
This is a great pr stunt.
There’s a similar story about a guy who sets up an add targeted to his wife or fiancé or something.
Later Facebook apparently made it so whatever group your targeting has a minimum size.
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Their campaign execution is brilliant...love it.
That said, nothing about this is new. Whether Facebook, Google, or any of the other countless (yes, thousands) of players in the AdTech ecosystem, this kind of targeting can be done with ease and for pennies per user.
The deprecation of third-party data, cookies, and cross-domain tracking couldn't happen soon enough. It's not a perfect solution but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
For any that haven't seen it- a great essay on advertising and how it relates to cancer: http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
You can export the data Facebook has on you and see what could be used to populate these ads for you.
This isn't some attack on Signal specifically the personal ads policy has already existed and it was enforced against us once with a somewhat similar idea for voter locality. It would have been approved likely if took out the 'you' voice examples in the policy below.
Though I understand the point of this as marketing & article to educate on what data FB does have and the ads look really cool!
https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/per...
Ha, when the Ledger Nano database was leaked a few months ago it published the address data of roughly 300k users, including their email. Given the fact that you can upload e-mail adresses to Facebook for more directed targetting (really nice feature lol), I thought it might be fitting to advertise a 5$ wrench offer to each of these users and if they might be interested in one. Really weird actually that it's OK to upload other peoples contacts to such services without any checks whatsoever.
Brilliant ad campaign. So scummy that facebook allows advertisers these insights, but immediately shuts it down when you try to inform their users.
I wonder what the reasoning for disabling the account is. It would be extremely funny if the T&Cs said you can’t expose FB as creepy. :D
Signal has been putting out 10/10 content lately, I hope they keep it up and in the mean time I will continue to use their services!
Looking at the 'Suggested for you' posts in Facebook and Instagram, I am really puzzled about the way data is used.
Whereas they definitely have access to a lot of (my) data, they are still unable to correctly know my gender.
And speaking of rules for ads. I recently noticed that most of the ads are pure spam and even fake products are offered. It is extremely obvious what this is about.
Is there a way I can see this for myself? Ie who facebook thinks I am? Is there something similar for google or other ad networks?
Facebook is terrible.
However, Signal has its own failings as well. From what I understand, it:
* Refuses to federate.
* Hostile to independent clients.
* Run as a one-man show.
That's not Facebook-bad, but it's sad that Signal is consistently exhibiting this attitude, meaning that it can't be a good basis for personal instant messaging going into the future.
Sam Lavigne did a similar project in 2017, generating targeted video ads on twitter.
This is brilliant and I love it.
Is it just me though, that for how targeted FB and Google try to be, they're usually still way off?
I mean sure they'll know things like relationship status that I directly input, but the inferences are often very incorrect.
Some more fun reading on Facebook targeting from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17112559
I didn't know there was this level of detail in FB ads, I'll have to start targeting more specific audiences for my ads then. Very useful info.
Facebook business model will not be banned as they do what services always wanted to have - a large network of wilful informants. Keep feeding them data.
Would be cool to sign in with Facebook and then generate the ad set for yourself that they WOULD have made. I think it’d be quite telling.
cant this be fooled though? I believe there is a site where you could select a "profile" and it would open up these links in your browser to give off the impression of that profile.
For example, if you selecting "wealthy" it would just open up a bunch of urls to expensive brands, luxury items, private charter jets. I am not entirely sure if it actually worked or not.
And then there is me who has no idea about ads. NoScript, PiHole and uBlock Origin tend to do that so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And they are building signal for peddling their ecoin?
Reduce the amount of text, theyll let you run it.
only a fool has a social media account, I followed Jaron Lanier's advice and delete them all years ago. I have not missed them for a second
NFTTY it's really changing the game in the crypto space knowing how hoy the nft world it's right no , this proyect Will melt serious faces in this bulll run ,thanks TCL to put it out for us #thecryptolifestyle #nft #Poolz #tcl #mr100x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8zcfalougY
NFTTY it's really changing the game in the crypto space knowing how hoy the nft world it's right no , this proyect Will melt serious faces in this bulll run ,thanks TCL to put it out for us #thecryptolifestyle #nft #Poolz #tcl #mr100x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8zcfalougYS
Seriously how is advertisement legal?
If you truly believe in free market then surely you must agree advertisement is a mass manipulation technique that should be illegal as anti-competitive technique (reinforces dominant positions).
If you're an anarchist/socialist then surely you've read or seen some talks by Noam Chomsky about "Manufacturing consent" and by now you want to burn down every TV station, bank and police station you can think of.
Even if you don't mind printed ads, if you're just a little bit concerned about privacy, you must be out of your mind that certain data obtained about you may be used against you and your loved ones
Who's left to defend that kind of degrading practice? How can we put enough social pressure on these people so they stop and develop healthier activities than to hijack our brains remotely?
I don't know if it's just me but I can't stop thinking about the day Facebook & Co will get bored with selling those stupid ads and will use all their powerful datasets to do more dangerous, scary things.
Will then everybody think "Oh, I really didn't see this coming..."?
The irony that Signal itself has an Instagram account...
[not related but] I don't understand why people keep telling that signal app which uses a central server and phone number as identification and verification is secure and safe to use.
the future is decentralized