This post originally appeared on Chris DeLuca's blog
Today I downloaded all the data Facebook has on me, and started poking through it. Since it’s been the focus of every privacy scandal, I went straight to the ad data. I found two items.
- My ad “interests”, a simple keyword list
- A file called
advertisers_who_uploaded_a_contact_list_with_your_information.json
Now, Facebook made more than 4 billion dollars last year, and their business model is built entirely on selling user behavior to advertisers, so it seems impossible that not only is this all the data they have on me, but that it’s also this simplistic. Be that as it may, let’s take it at face value.
My “interests”
There are 39 “topics” that Facebook has identified as one of my interests. I’ve been on Facebook since 2010, but was never a heavy user,and have cut back significantly in the past several years, so the data is pleasantly skewed.
Here’s the whole list.
- Alternative dance
- Alternative rock
- American Gods (TV series)
- Arts and music
- Batman Begins
- Blues rock
- British blues
- Casual game
- Chillwave
- Cillian Murphy
- Cream (band)
- Deathwish Inc.
- Decorative arts
- Dunce
- Dune (novel)
- Dungeons & Dragons
- Emo (music)
- Folk art
- Folk rock
- Frank Herbert
- Future (rapper)
- Games
- Glidden (paints)
- Grunge
- Hardcore punk
- Hong Kong
- Humans of New York
- Indie rock
- Ken Watanabe
- Led Zeppelin
- Mannequin
- Paper
- Pop music
- Professional wrestling match types
- Rock music
- Studio
- Tom Wilkinson
- Wally Pfister
Without giving too much away (because why give advertisers a handout?),I’d say I have a genuine interest in about half the listed topics, which is honestly a pretty good (for them) error rate for the kind of dragnet campaigns advertisers run on the web.
Yet some of these keywords are bonkers. Like “Studio”. Studio? What ad exec in their right mind wakes up and says, “You know who we need to target? People with a keen interest in ‘Studio’.”
Here be the glories of the algorithm.
The uploaded contact list
There are 1,349 “advertisers who uploaded a contact list with your information.” There’s no indication on how many times this data was uploaded, or where it was uploaded, or even what data was uploaded. It’s just a list of companies.
Some of the companies I recognize, like Airbnb and AARP (zing?), and others I had to look up, like Ebates and ConversioBot (A shady cash loan service and a shady chat bot service, respectively).
And some companies seemed to want to really cover their bases, like:
- Toyota Escondido
- Toyota Hawaii
- Toyota Marin
- Toyota of Bedford
- Toyota Of Berkeley
- Toyota of Braintree
- Toyota of Cedar Park
- Toyota of Dallas
- Toyota of Des Moines
- Toyota of Dothan
- Toyota of Easley
- Toyota of Fayetteville
- Toyota of Fort Worth
- Toyota of Hackensack
- Toyota of Hollywood
- Toyota of Irving
- Toyota of Massapequa
- Toyota of Melbourne
- Toyota of Nashua
- Toyota of Pharr
- Toyota of Redlands
- Toyota of Scranton
- Toyota of Southern Maryland
- Toyota of Stamford
- Toyota of Surprise
- Toyota of Tampa Bay
- Toyota of Terre Haute
- Toyota of Turnersville
- Toyota of Wallingford
- Toyota of York
- Toyota Santa Monica
- Toyota South
I sifted through the companies looking for anything overtly political, since that’s the really big focus of Facebook’s scandals. All I found was a single, lonely company:
- Conservative Party of New York State
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I can pretty safely say they’re barking up the wrong tree.
But remember, this data isn’t just mine (as much as any of this data is ours). It’s yours, too, because these data talks about where I showed up in a contact list, which includes however many other people.
Scary? Don’t worry, things feel so much better from behind the wheel of a brand new Toyota!
Top comments (1)
is good!