The most plausible explanation is that people are just easy to predict. Might be tough to admit, but that’s actually a much simpler explanation than Facebook having a back door into our messages, which are end-to-end encrypted.
As others above me have thoroughly explained, there are numerous ways Facebook could figure out what you’re reading about/listening to/viewing on the internet, which ultimately drives what you are chatting with your friends about. Reading your messages would actually be the most difficult and low fidelity way for them to try to mine this information. They can just see your entire browsing history and extract from there, since the majority of website have a tracking cookie that in some way phones home to Facebook.
Seriously? Facebook knows their internal thoughts well enough to guess what topics they would choose when trying to pick something they "never talk about"?
If FB could do that, then FB would realize that these topics are not actually products they are interested in, so they wouldn't be showing ads.
FB can show you one ad per month about some special steam train ride and maybe you’ll scroll past it without a second thought but then maybe one day you’ve been watching a film about the golden age of steam or you’ve been talking to a friend about it and then you see the ad and remember the film or conversation and you think ‘Crikey, how on earth did Facebook come up with that as!’
Facebook show (many people) a lot of ads and they only need to get lucky a few times for you to think it’s uncanny. All the non-unique times an ad was not relevant will have blurred together and so you won’t easily remember that they were the vast majority of the ads you see. A little bit of feedback (eg if you dwell on the coincidental ad) may cause you to see more related ads.
> The most plausible explanation is that people are just easy to predict. Might be tough to admit, but that’s actually a much simpler explanation than Facebook having a back door into our messages, which are end-to-end encrypted.
I disagree with this to the extent that I would say the exact opposite is true.
Facebook (and others) have proven time and time again that they cannot correctly predict user behavior by locking out or banning users who actually did nothing wrong (because their algorithms predicted that the user was breaking terms of service or might be planning to). This happens over and over, even in cases not so complex as the "photos of my child to send to my doctor".
But on the flipside, Zuckerberg has been documented saying one thing to the public and exactly the opposite in private. Heck, Facebook has had memos and emails leaked where they talked about how they would say one thing in public (and to regulators) while doing the opposite secretly.
I believe that Facebook cheats and breaks agreements (and laws) in multiple directions all the time, often willfully. They've even been caught cheating their own ad customers by intentionally overstating the effectiveness and target accuracy of their ads.
As others above me have thoroughly explained, there are numerous ways Facebook could figure out what you’re reading about/listening to/viewing on the internet, which ultimately drives what you are chatting with your friends about. Reading your messages would actually be the most difficult and low fidelity way for them to try to mine this information. They can just see your entire browsing history and extract from there, since the majority of website have a tracking cookie that in some way phones home to Facebook.