
Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You - eplanit
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/us/politics/facebook-ads-politics.html
======
bjackman
Main takeaway from this: Facebook know much less about me than I thought.
Maybe the whole online advertising industry is an emperor's-new-clothes
situation.

My favourite bands appear to be Blaise Matuidi (who is a footballer - I don't
even know who he plays for though), Kool & The Gang, Kool & The Gang, Kool &
The Gang, and Kool & The Gang. My favourite sports entities are Team and Kool
& The Gang. Under food & drink I have been correctly identified as a fan of
water.

I'm a pretty active Facebook user too, so it's not like they have a death of
data.

~~~
nswanberg
If by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" you mean the paranoia about what these
companies "know" about individuals, I agree. But since at least Google's
revenue last year was $75 billion, it's clearly valuable to have statistically
significant information about groups of people.

I think that people who are worried about data that others have on them would
be better served by worrying about data brokers first, though:
[https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-
about-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-what-
data-brokers-know-about-you) (though again, I think that the amount these
people know and sell to others is less than a small town shopkeeper would know
about their patrons 100 years ago).

~~~
Myrmornis
I think by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" GP is referring to the
possibility that companies are paying for advertising based on the notion that
it will be targeted using sophisticated metadata on users, but that the
metadata is in fact far less sophisticated than touted.

One would think that all significant ad spend by sane companies is made in the
context of an empirical study demonstrating the uptick in the relevant metrics
caused by (smaller) ad spend. But honestly, I share the suspicions of the GP,
that western capitalism in certain areas (e.g. Bro-y advertising) is
influenced more by group think and connections and unthinking continuation of
established business practices, than by truly objective data-driven decision
making.

------
bduerst
TL;DR: for those hitting a paywall:

1) Go to
[https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences](https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences)

2) Open the _Lifestyle and culture_ tab under the Interests section

3) Find the _US Politics_ box and see what Facebook thinks you are in the
parentheses

Edit: Apparently I am targeted for ads related to bubble wrap.

~~~
raverbashing
And of course you'll only have the "US Politics" box if you are in the US

(but I get "equivalent" results)

~~~
Noseshine
I get nothing at all. Maybe that's because I have never clicked on or
published anything related to politics, I only share "sciency" links (and none
related to politics). I long ago decided that the best way to "lose friends
and alienate people" [0] is to push political content to your network.

[0] To those (few?) who don't know, that's a(n inverted) book reference.

------
cfmcdonald
Thanks NYT for pointing me to this hilarious section of Facebook. My hobbies
apparently include 'tears', and my only food and drink interest is 'bread
roll'.

~~~
pauljaworski
Apparently one of my hobbies is "Abstraction." I guess that is true...

~~~
dragonwriter
Apparently, one of my hobbies is _Shapeshifting_. And another is Resin.

~~~
pauljaworski
Nothing better than a weekend of shapeshifting and resin.

------
JonnieCache
Apparently the only thing I'm interested in is "Anarchism." Feeling pretty
cool right now tbh. Just need to get Nihilism in there and I can paint my
bedroom black.

EDIT: they also know I'm a page admin who uses firefox, such insight. Are
there higher-order inferences which we aren't privy to here? What are they
doing with all that supposed AI? Stochastically optimizing their javascript
pipeline?

------
stordoff
Apparently "Democracy" is one of the ad groups I'm targeted for, along with
both "Republican Party (United States)" and "Democratic Party (United
States)".

Weirdly "In-N-Out Burger" is also listed, despite the fact they don't exist
where I live (UK). The suggested ad. preferences are also a little odd - it's
almost entirely hip-hop related for no apparent reason (Ghostface
Killah/rza/Raekwon/gza/Ol' Dirty Bastard/KRS-One/Computer data
storage/Nas/Busta Rhymes/Big L).

I also note that "information [includes] actions you take on and off
Facebook". I assume this refers to embedded Like buttons and similar?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> Weirdly "In-N-Out Burger" is also listed, despite the fact they don't exist
> where I live (UK).

Heh, how strange. Me too. As well as Filipino politics, some American Football
teams and someone called Rupert Neve.

Also my food and drink interests include "Beef".

~~~
JonnieCache
_> Rupert Neve._

Founder of Neve Electronics, famous for inventing the modern sound mixing
desk. You're in good company there.

------
grenoire
I had written a small blog post about a few weeks back. This tab has been
covered many times by other news organisations, especially when Facebook data
mining procedures first resulted in a light scare wave.

I'll quote myself:

'...the really scary thing is that it likely knows much more, and these are
only a part of what it knows. Although these are said to be used for
displaying adverts, they are updated regardless of whether or not you are
opted out of the interest-based adverts program.'

~~~
patrickmay
That's quite questionable. I work in adtech and when we get an opt out we
remove all information about that profile and do not add anything new. We also
keep the opt out flag recorded permanently.

Facebook probably has more lawyers than we do, though.

------
mixedCase
Apparently I'm an anticommunist communist liberal freethinking catholic
atheist nazi.

Guess I'm going flag shopping.

------
TheAceOfHearts
This prompted me to delete all my interests on Facebook, and it made me find a
bug: when you don't have any interests, it'll show a spinner that never goes
away. [0]

[0]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/35731h2se6d1ur2/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/35731h2se6d1ur2/Screenshot%202016-08-24%2001.46.33.png?dl=0)

~~~
harveywi
> it'll show a spinner that never goes away.

Like the last scene of Inception.

~~~
pc86
So _that 's_ what the movie was about.

------
Myrmornis
If I were facebook I would hesitate to make this so visible because I wouldn't
want my advertising clients to know how unsophisticated and inaccurate these
inferences seem to be.

~~~
Chronic9q
These are not the tags Facebook uses to target ads. Well, they are included,
but they use far more hidden, or "dark tags"

~~~
Myrmornis
Still, a client might not know that, and anyway it doesn't paint a picture of
sophistication in the realm of predicting user interests.

------
dismantlethesun
1\. My music choices are frozen in time from college 16 years ago
(incidentally, daytime Alt Rock music channels in DC similarly haven't
progressed past early 2000 nostalgia).

2\. My lifestyle and culture is Mac OSX and Android, due to whatever devices I
happen to use Facebook on.

3\. My food and drink interest is a single choice: "Food".

Well played Facebook.

------
andybak
Wow. Apparently my interests include 'production' (nice and ambiguous) and
'com files'!

------
rayiner
Seems to be based heavily on what your friends post. Has me labeled as "very
liberal" lol.

------
tdkl
Seems that a good measure for them not gaining much data about you is to keep
logging in an incognito window and not liking much.

All the Interests I see are from where I login (mobile phone models, browsers,
OS), one Android wrapper app, apps I linked with FB and 1 Facebook page I
liked (football club).

Good news, less data FB has on me, more it makes me happy.

~~~
ffggvv
Don't use facebook at all?

------
DanielBMarkham
Interesting. I'm a moderate. Who knew?

Also interesting: I'm a Christian. I haven't been to a church in 10 or 15
years. I'm an agnostic. I tell people all the time that I'm not religious.
But, because of my upbringing, I have a lot of Christian friends. From time-
to-time I like their stuff. So Facebook says I'm a Christian. So I must be a
Christian?

Facebook knows I have teenagers in the house, and that I have adult children.

The vast majority of this stuff, however, is about things I own: an iPad, my
phone, the browser I use, the fact that I'm an early adopter. (How in the
world could FB figure out I'm an early adopter?)

And of course, all of this will only get better over time. This is the extreme
early stages of machine-based human classification.

It's a very strange experience having all of your posts, likes, and comments
being judged by a machine, then told who you really are. Seductively
frightening.

~~~
dismantlethesun
From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely
religious thing.

Books use allusions to the Bible, even if their authors and readers aren't
very religious. People pay lip service to the idea of God (singular,
capitalised, and having a particular brand of deity in mind), even if they
haven't prayed in decades.

> How in the world could FB figure out I'm an early adopter?

Maybe if you accessed Facebook from a recently released device?

Facebook decided that Mac OSX is part of my 'lifestyle', merely because of the
fact that I access them through only through a Mac now despite being a PC
owner for decades before that.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
"From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely
religious thing."

Excellent point. So much of the public dialogue involves similes and metaphors
with references to an entire milieu of common myths and values.

I was watching a history show once about religion in the U.S. An interesting
thing that I never realized was that religious references were huge part of
most every presidential speech up until just recently. It wasn't a dogmatic
religious reference, rather the speeches used a common Judaeo-Christian
backdrop as a canvas to make arguments about whatever the politician wanted.
In a way, this common culture provided a lingua franca between folks of widely
different belief systems who shared a lot of common stories. Even atheists and
agnostics like myself were usually exposed to a ton of this growing up, and
they could follow along -- many times making more of a religious argument in
rebuttal than was presented in the first place!

Because of this, even though I want the government to have nothing to do with
religion, I feel that kids should be educated in whatever the common mythos is
at the time in the culture around them. (I feel the same way about the
classics) There's just too much nuance they would miss otherwise. So much of
sharing and encouraging deep thought is about comparing complex ideas that are
best introduced by reference. If you have no context for the reference, you're
way behind the game (and likely will never catch up). Many times online if I'm
in a discussion, I make a reference to a complex topic, waiting while the
other person googles the keywords, and then I read a reply that obviously
indicates that while facts have been consumed by the other person, the
underlying concept hasn't really been absorbed into their life in order for
them to be able to get it out and reflect upon it. They're just parroting
Wikipedia blurbs.

Would FB advertisers knowing this make them more able to sell to me? Probably
not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more complex way than
a pretty girl, an animated dancing bear, and an offer of a free iPod.

~~~
dismantlethesun
> Probably not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more
> complex way ..

True enough. One way I can imagine this being used is if you have a person
from another culture (e.g. Japan), but the algorithm has identified them as
Christian, then certain ads made for the Christian motifs will have more of an
impact with them rather than simply being flowery allusions.

------
hobarrera
WAY off. I'm an agnostic atheist, and this lists "Judaism", "Christianism",
"Bible", etc. There's also a huge bunch of other stuff I don't remotely care
about.

Plus, there's no politic-related entry there.

~~~
alexhawdon
As someone who self-labels as an 'agnostic atheist' I'd say an interest in
those topics sounds likely; 'Interest' does not imply that you're a proponent,
only what you engage with...

------
Raed667
For me (non-US) the political interests I found are hilariously inconsistent.

\- Leftist/communist

\- Democratic Socialist

\- Obama

\- Nationalist

\- Pirate Party

\- Workers international

~~~
cornchips
What's inconsistent about them?

~~~
mastazi
I guess the parent found that "Nationalist" was inconsistent with all the
rest. As a side note, when the words "nationalist" and "socialist" were used
together in the past, things didn't end up very well.

------
hobarrera
As someone not from the US, I don't quite understand while people go "democrat
vs republican".

Not only can democracy and republicanism coexist, but they frequently do (I
live in a democratic republic, for example). Actually, I think a republican
democracy is what makes sense the most, and probably amongst the most common
forms of government around.

Anybody care to explain why these stances seem opposed to US-citizens?

~~~
fineIllregister
It's not meant to be read as "democracy the form of government versus republic
the form of government". "Democratic" and "Republican" are just brand names in
this case; both parties believe in democracy (popular voting) and
republicanism (representative government).

When people say "democrat vs republican" it's just shorthand for "The
political organization known as the Democratic Party vs. the political
organization known as the Republican Party." You can substitute the names of
political parties from your own country as a reference.

------
tnzn
they probably labeled me as "dangerous anarcho communist" by now

------
tptacek
I'm less concerned about this and more concerned that Facebook lists first
among my interests "slurry".

------
nicolas_t
Apparently I like soccer and te bible... As someone who is agnostic and cares
very little about religion and hate watching any sports, they couldn't be more
wrong :-)

Only thing they got right is that I'm a frequent traveller (but that's not
difficult to see based on my ips :-)).

------
randiantech
Its not showing up for me, even after clicking 'see more' until the end. Maybe
a US-only thing?

~~~
hughw
I'm in the US and don't see "US Politics" either.

------
randyrand
Well clearly they have some work to do because I'm labeled as very liberal but
I'm actually conservative - and I engage with politics on Facebook a decent
amount

I do like to read liberal articles though because I find them interesting

~~~
eddieh
It has me labeled as very liberal too, but I've "liked" guns, firearms, and
more conservative politicians than liberal ones, etc.

------
donw
Apparently my hobbies are Star Trek Vulcans, Old Age, and "Octopus".

------
jamescun
My profile lists my UK political preferences as all the three major parties
(Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives), as well as an interest in Religion and
the Bible (I'm an atheist).

------
forthwall
Interesting information here from Facebook - I don't know why Facebook thinks
I like coffee - I never drink it nor why it insists I thinks I'm a fascist who
likes bucket hats.

------
douche
Apparently I'm interested in "Solar Deity"

All hail Amun-Ra

------
ulucs
It seems that I've been it by the wrath of the K Nearest Neighbors model: The
affiliations are those of my friends and not mine.

------
AaronDreamcoin
Maybe FB is intentionally giving us inaccurate labels to make us less
concerned about them.

------
joonoro
Is there a way to see what Facebook labels you if you aren't registered on
Facebook?

~~~
throwanem
Doubtful. If you refuse to be of value to Facebook, why would it go out of its
way to be of value to you?

~~~
gnode
You may not be interested in Facebook, but Facebook is interested in you.

~~~
throwanem
Of course it is. But it is not in Facebook's interest to reward me if, instead
of playing along, I choose to require that all of the data it obtain about me
come at second hand.

------
cornchips
Argh! Has anyone else turned this off and had it turn on again by "itself"?

------
vilmosi
Doesn't work for me. Apparently, I don't have US politics as an interest.

------
ffggvv
Just wow! The great hacker news community that doesn't like being tracked and
loves privacy is using facebook! What a bunch of hypocrites!

A small tip for you...

[https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account](https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account)

------
DoubleGlazing
Apparently I'm on the contact lists of several talent agencies.

Which is odd I would pop out a turtles head in fear if I found myself on stage
or in front of a camera.

------
matrix2596
Is there something similar for google ??

~~~
icebraining
You can see your ad profile:
[https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated](https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated)

------
tawpKek
This trash algorithm identifies me as "very liberal". Excuse me, I am a
leftist, not some modern liberal tyvm.

