How to use your iPhone to see what political affiliation Facebook thinks you have
Facebook stores a significant amount of data on every user, including details about devices and operating systems you've used to access the service, and what political affiliation you may be. Here's how to find out what the world's largest social network knows about you.
Facebook recently opened up its data stores, telling users what data it was collecting on them in an effort to tailor what content and advertisements they see.
They didn't say it would be easy to find, however. Here's how find out what Facebook has gleaned about your political affiliation, and other tidbits about you.
1) Open the Facebook app on your iPhone, and click more.
2) Select "Settings"
3) Select "Account Settings"
4) Scroll down to Ads
5) Choose "Manage the preferences..."
6) Select "Visit ad preferences"
7) Select "More"
8) Select "Lifestyle and Culture"
9) Scroll down to US Politics, and it will tell you how Facebook assumes you will vote, amongst other gleaned information.
According to the New York Times, Facebook gathers political affiliation information based on stated preferences, sites liked, and adjacency. You user adjacency to a political group is measured by the affiliation of other people that visit the same Facebook groups and pages that you do.
The gleaned information that Facebook has should be viewed with a grain of salt. While general terms identified as favored topics for the user -- or denotation of the user's preferred operating system -- are correct, the political affiliation was misidentified for most of the people we gave the instructions to that did not self-identify as associated with a political affiliation.
Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns are aiming Facebook ad buys at politically moderate-identified individuals.
Of course, targeted ads on Facebook apply to interests that go well beyond political affiliation to include factors such as schools attended, family proximity, favorite celebrities, and much more. Facebook will also target users with ads based on websites they follow, including AppleInsider's official page.
Facebook recently opened up its data stores, telling users what data it was collecting on them in an effort to tailor what content and advertisements they see.
They didn't say it would be easy to find, however. Here's how find out what Facebook has gleaned about your political affiliation, and other tidbits about you.
1) Open the Facebook app on your iPhone, and click more.
2) Select "Settings"
3) Select "Account Settings"
4) Scroll down to Ads
5) Choose "Manage the preferences..."
6) Select "Visit ad preferences"
7) Select "More"
8) Select "Lifestyle and Culture"
9) Scroll down to US Politics, and it will tell you how Facebook assumes you will vote, amongst other gleaned information.
According to the New York Times, Facebook gathers political affiliation information based on stated preferences, sites liked, and adjacency. You user adjacency to a political group is measured by the affiliation of other people that visit the same Facebook groups and pages that you do.
The gleaned information that Facebook has should be viewed with a grain of salt. While general terms identified as favored topics for the user -- or denotation of the user's preferred operating system -- are correct, the political affiliation was misidentified for most of the people we gave the instructions to that did not self-identify as associated with a political affiliation.
Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns are aiming Facebook ad buys at politically moderate-identified individuals.
Of course, targeted ads on Facebook apply to interests that go well beyond political affiliation to include factors such as schools attended, family proximity, favorite celebrities, and much more. Facebook will also target users with ads based on websites they follow, including AppleInsider's official page.
Comments
I deleted the Facebook app from my iPhone.
I allowed it access to my Photos to facilitate the upload of the occasional snap.
The Facebook app then regularly collated many of my photos into some scrapbook album and kept pestering me to post the result onto Facebook.
Frigthening.
How do those who have never used FB find out what data that relates to you they have sucked out of the ether?
Who knows if it is accurate or a complete load of Bulls whatsits?
Their algorithm is broken!
What have others uncovered in this same exercise, I'm curious to know if any of you uncovered anything you didn't expect to see??
Let me give you an allegory as to what was disturbing about the Facebook app constantly pestering me to upload my photos:
Man gets a washing machine delivered by Mr. Facebook. Mr. Facebook asks for permission to enter man's house to make the installation. Man quickly pops to his adjoining garage, leaving Mr. Facebook to install the washing machine.
Man returns and find Mr. Facebook holding an order form in his hand.
Mr Facebook tells him, "As you gave me permission to enter your home, after finishing the installation I took the opportunity to go through every drawer in every room of your house and add what I thought you need to this order form. All you need to do is sign here and I'll deliver it all to you the next day...".
This mirrors my experience of the Facebook app for iPhone. I had only given it permission to access my photo album to allow the occasional upload to Facebook. Yet each time I would open the app I would find it had rifled through the photos I had taken for the day, collate together several of them and suggest they be uploaded into Facebook.
That's why I had to delete it.
That's not creepy.
The targeted advertising was set to on - "for this device only as you have opted out of targeted advertising on another device".
Thanks for respecting my requests facebook. So does this mean I have to go into the account settings on any device I use to access facebook and set up the privacy settings on each one?
The other thing I noticed was that removing things facebook has determined I am interested in really messes with their algorithms. Because I have done this a few times now the list of my main interests has become rather comical. My main interests were toast, biscuits and livestock... I'm sure facebook still keep a record of the interests I "removed" though.
"we're working on it..."