[HN Gopher] Researchers show Facebook's ad tools can target a si...
___________________________________________________________________
Researchers show Facebook's ad tools can target a single user
Author : elorant
Score : 88 points
Date : 2021-10-16 14:52 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| benreesman wrote:
| Leaving aside the morality, one huge objection to this level of
| targeting granularity is that it's just _bad business_.
|
| Obviously a gross oversimplification, but to a first
| approximation ads ranking, pacing, and auction drive ads revenue.
| Ads targeting drives _careers_ , at least at FB at least as of a
| few years ago.
|
| The creepy factor does _way_ more damage to FB's business than
| the bells and whistles that the buyers of inventory use adds to
| it.
|
| When something happens on Google, people feel like it happened in
| their living room. When something happens on FB, people feel like
| it happened in their _bedroom_.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Facebook and other ad platforms are just milking the cash cow
| as much as possible until it is not no longer possible because
| of regulation.
|
| However, regardless of privacy laws and other issues with
| advertising, this particular kind of abuse could be prevented
| by displaying how many people fall into that ad's targeting
| criteria and how much this advertiser has spent in the last
| year. Legitimate ads will typically target a large amount of
| people and would've spent significant amounts, where as
| "gaslighting" ads like these would typically reach very few
| people and the advertiser would've spent a relatively low
| amount in comparison.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > The creepy factor does way more damage to FB's business than
| the bells and whistles that the buyers of inventory use adds to
| it.
|
| Facebook incited a genocide in Myanmar. PR is not in their list
| of worries.
| pixelgeek wrote:
| > The creepy factor does way more damage to FB's business than
| the bells and whistles that the buyers of inventory use adds to
| it.
|
| They helped to create a genocide in Burma. If people didn't
| leave after that then I doubt any "creep factor" is going to
| hurt their business.
| stuaxo wrote:
| This was famously used to target Jeremy Corbyn.
|
| Labour staffers working to prevent their own party winning under
| him were not posting the adverts they were meant to, but were
| able to use geofencing and other specifiers so it looked like
| everything was it should be when he was browsing.
|
| https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-hq-used-facebook-a...
| yellow_postit wrote:
| Here's the link to the paper on arXiv:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.06636 as I didn't find it in the
| TechCrunch article.
| david422 wrote:
| This guy already discovered this:
|
| https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...
| spurgu wrote:
| Came here to post this.
|
| Also, can't read Techcrunch articles because they're blocked
| (by NextDNS) due to redirecting through
| https://guce.advertising.com/
| thedevelopnik wrote:
| Yeah like 7 years ago I was thinking about moving into a
| marketing role and bought a book on social media. The
| introduction included a bit where the author bought a Facebook
| ad wishing his wife a happy anniversary because he could target
| her so precisely.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| It's so frustrating that our political institutions, who are
| supposed to act for our collective benefit, are so incredibly
| useless.
|
| We've known unambiguously about the impact big business had had
| on our climate, yet it took decades for governments to act
| decisively - mine still hasn't.
|
| We knew about the hazards of smoking for decades before
| government acted decisively, despite the enormous costs to
| society. In many cases these companies continue to be allowed to
| sell their shit, despite knowing that it's not just addictive,
| but also toxic.
|
| Asbestos, leaded fuel, road safety, and many other large problems
| were left unregulated for _decades_ , and in all cases a small
| number of corporations profited - often marginally - at the
| expense of thousands or even millions of individuals.
|
| And now we see the same with Facebook. We've known for more than
| a decade that Facebook is a toxic waste pit of information.
|
| There is much that could be done, and much more quickly, but our
| politicians sit on their fat arses and do Jack shit.
|
| Without _effective_ democracy we have no way to resolve these
| problems because the whole reason we have a democracy in the
| first place is to ensure these powerful bastards work in the best
| interest of _everyone_.
|
| If King Zuckerberg is more powerful than his parliament of
| lapdogs, then democracy is dead.
|
| /rant
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Serious question:
|
| While you can target a SINGLE person, the targeting doesn't tell
| you who that person is. So, I can target my wife - but I already
| knew who she was. Also, I can target someone using 18 parameters,
| but I don't actually know who that person is unless they click on
| my add and tell me "this is who I am".
|
| So: does this violate privacy laws?
| twright wrote:
| Maybe. I'm not a lawyer, but it's unlikely that you make your
| friends sign NDA's to prevent them from selling metadata about
| you so firms can nanotarget ads at you. I hope most would
| consider it to be unethical.
|
| The concern that immediately comes to mind is that this
| nanotargeting ability could be abused by (just to name a few)
| spiteful ex-partners, stalkers, internet trolls, and generally
| vengeful unpleasant people.
| amelius wrote:
| Assume you target an ad for an adultery service to your wife.
| Assume she clicks the ad. Then the service (a mock-up you
| built) will ask her for her name and other information. Assume
| she gives the service this information. Now you know that your
| wife is interested in adultery.
|
| Interestingly, there is a different way to go about it.
|
| Assume you create an ad for diamonds, and target it to people
| who are into adultery. Your wife, who likes diamonds, sees the
| ad, clicks it, and fills in her information on the diamonds
| website (a mock-up you built). Now again, you know that your
| wife is interested in adultery. But she is unaware that she
| even revealed this information in her transaction with the
| "diamond" website. She wrongfully assumed that all the private
| information she shared with FB stayed on FB's servers only.
| Note that this leak also exists in Google.
| elorant wrote:
| What if you're a stalker though? You can target a person by
| his/her e-mail address or phone. Facebook used to allow you to
| target as little as 20 persons. I don't know if this still
| holds true. So you enter 19 fake e-mails and the one you're
| interested in targeting. So eventually only a specific person
| will see your ad.
| proc0 wrote:
| Have we not learned to assume the worse from these
| institutions/corporations yet? Again and again it's proven they
| will go as far as they're able to.
|
| Unless there is proof they DON'T do this, like some law that is
| clearly enforced, or some piece of code that mathematically
| prevents it from doing so... I think it is more than safe to
| assume they can and they have violated privacy concerns.
| pixelgeek wrote:
| Of interest is that my blocker stopped 45 tracking elements on
| that Techcrunch article.
| spurgu wrote:
| I'm unable to even arrive at the site:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28888748 :D
| kristo wrote:
| I did this to send someone a birthday message in 2010 or so.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-16 23:01 UTC)