I'll Be Your Mirror

The targeting on Facebook advertising is starting to annoy me. Then again, I have only myself to blame. After all, the basic value of the Facebook experience is simple: you tell them everything you can  bear to about yourself and create a list of your "friends." Then you read about what those friends are doing. How can you be surprised when the advertising widgety gurus in the Facebook lab create an algorithm that spits back a version of you - the improved if you buy our products you.

Hence, the hideous targeted advertisement to the left. Which hit me flat in the, er, gut today at about 3:37 just as I perused the 30 or so friend requests I can't make heads or tails of in my Facebook queue.

Honestly, you don't enter your height or weight in the little Facebook query form, so how did they guess? I joined no Forty-something and Flabby groups. My photo is discreet. Was it all those Big Bill Broonzy songs in my iTunes playlist?

Or were they just playing the odds of date of birth, 1962.

As I've long argued, the privacy debate is over - has been since the 90s or before. Everything we purchase is tracked or logged or dumped into a database; swipe cards - from bank cards to EZ-pass - track our movements. Cell phone bills show our migratory patterns. And just wait till the new GPS numbers. There are security cameras is every building in midtown, a camera on every corner, every stop-light. Our web surfing tracks are rubbed in digital brass. Email is forever. And as we know, the telecom companies will turn over the records to any tinhorn who happens to ask, Federal warrants be damned. Hell, even the Democratic nominee for president, a man seeking to undo the horrors of the Bush years, agrees with it.

So I long ago decided to try and embrace this public stance, to give up on digital privacy and enjoy the increased communications and the new relationships that social networks can provide. But now, this targeted ad for green tea and a flat belly and has riled me. I have no beefcake aspirations, Facebook. Turn off your evil machine and keep your "abs" to yourself.

Comments

[Canid]

Yeah, I've gotten the abs ad, too--I'm 50, so I guess I am being asked to imagine the man I should be. But I also get a lot of those ads with the cute girls jumping aorund in their underwear. What are they urging me to imagine?

[Judith]

The next generation Facebook "marketing" will be ingenious. The companies that grasp a way to do it without totally ticking people off will be the winners.

The stuff you are talking about is just plain sloppy - it is spam basically.

[Slappy]

Privacy!?!? How do you think I feel? The bastards stole my profile photo to sell ultra green tea (It really works by the way) and now it appears on your blog!

[tina oitcica harris]

I just happened to visit Facebook yesterday and today. The amount of junk thrown at me got me "dazed and confused" w/o mind enhancers. Today I began to understand more of it. A lot of the ad-ons are ridiculously silly.
Get a grip, Facebook, already!

[Jill]

Facebook is pure evil. End of story.

[B Tween]

I agree, the days of privacy - digital and otherwise - are long over. The game is now truly all about effective targeting, and as Judith said, the FB algo is sloppy.

I remember once many years ago sending an IM to a guy on AOL about Isuzu troopers - my ride at the time was giving me trouble.

Within seconds, all the embedded banners turned to car-related ads.

That gave me pause - it was like 1997 or 98 at the time. I realized then, as you did, Tom that fighting it is pissing in the wind. I do everything more or less publicly. I simply don't engage in activities on or off line that I would not want discovered.

Kinda forces one to live a clean lifestyle!

In any case, "they" get progressively more and more sophisticated and this "problem" (depending on your view of it) will only get worse.

[scott]

yep, i'm amazed at the lack of care people have with their privacy now guess its a new generation thing